I' 



"^ clear and moving statement of Armenia's case'* 

— VISCOUNT BRYCE 

ARMENIA 

AND THE WAR 

cAn Armenian's Voint of Fiew, with 

an Appeal to Britain and the Coming 

Peace Conference 

By A. P. HACOBIAN 

With a Preface by the 
%T. HON. VISCOUNT ^RYCE, O. M. 

ff\ "Armenians know, if anyone does, what 
Tdl bondage and suffering under the tyrant's 
heel mean, and they yield to none in their 
profound sympathy and admiration for heroic 
Belgium, Serbia and the occupied parts of 
France. The martyrdom of 5000 unoffending 
Belgian civilians is a horrible enough episode, 
but surely there is some difference between 
5000 and 600,000 victims, to say nothing of the 
600,000 who were enslaved, forcibly converted 
to Islam, and driven in caravans of torture 
and death to the Mesopotamian deserts. What 
is the condition of these unfortunates, and how 
many have survived, must remain a dread 
secret of the desert until the end of the war." 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Publishers New York 



/ 

ARMENIA AND THE WAR 
A. P. HACOBIAN 



1)V 



ARMENIA 

AND THE WAR 



AN ARMENIAN'S POINT OF VIEW 
WITH AN APPEAL TO BRITAIN AND 
THE COMING PEACE CONFERENCE 



a/p/hacobian 



WITH A PREFACE BY THE RT. HON. 

VISCOUNT BRYCE, O. M. 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



By Trmnufer 
MAY 6 I 1919 



"They are slaves who fear to speak 
For the fallen and the weak : 
They are slaves who will not choose 
Hatred, scoffing and abuse, 
Rather than in silence shrink 
From the truth they needs must think : 
They are slaves who dare not be 
In the right with two or three." 

Lowell, 



"To serve Armenia is to serve civilization." 

W. E. Gladstone. 

"We have put our money on the wrong horse." ^ 

The Marquis of Salisbury. 



". .• . a Government incurably barbarous and 
corrupt." 

The Duke of Argyll, 



". . . the Ottoman Empire . . . decidedly 
foreign to Western civilization" 

Allies' Note to President Wilson, 
January 11, 1917. 



^ After the massacres of 1895-1896, Lord Salisbury, 
who had himself taken a prominent part in the consumma- 
tion of the Treaty of Berlin and the Cyprus Convention, 
frankly admitted the failure of the policy which gave 
birth to these treaties, and the futility of relying upon 
Turkish promises. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The end of the war will leave Great Britain 
and her Allies the practical arbiters of the desti- 
nies of Europe and the Near East. The pre- 
dominant part played in the prosecution of the 
war by Great Britain and the British Empire 
will entitle them to an equally decisive voice in 
the councils of the Peace Conference. That 
proud position carries with it a supreme privilege 
as well as a heavy moral responsibility. That 
the voice and weight of Britain and Greater 
Britain will be cast, on all occasions, on the side 
of justice and liberty, there cannot be the slight- 
est doubt. But however just and fair-minded a 
judge may be, it is impossible for him to dispense 
justice without hearing all sides of the case before 
him. 

That is my plea for placing this statement of 
the cause of my afflicted country before the 
British public, confident that, with its inherent 
love of fair play, it will give my pleading a fair 
hearing. 

I am anxious to make one point clear. I hold 
no authority and claim no right whatever to 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

speak for the nation or any national or local 
organization of any kind. The views set forth 
in this little volume are the views of an individual 
Armenian who feels, as do no doubt all his com- 
patriots, that the Armenian blood that has 
flowed so freely in this war, imposes upon every 
living Armenian the sacred duty of employing 
all legitimate means in his power to secure to the 
survivors the justice and reparation to which their 
numerous fallen relatives have given them an 
overwhelming and indisputable title. They are 
my views, and the responsibility for them rests on 
myself and myself alone. 

I have stated my views frankly. One or two 
of my friends were kind enough to express the 
opinion that that might injure our cause. While 
I appreciate their interest and solicitude, I do 
not share their fears. I am convinced that the 
truth can never be unpopular with the British 
public or prejudice a good cause. 

I have, of necessity, had to quote freely from 
many sources, and I take this opportunity to 
express my apologies and indebtedness to the 
authorities quoted, in particular to Lord Bryce 
and Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee for very kindly per- 
mitting me to quote extracts from the Blue Book. 

A. P. Hacobian. 

London. 



PREFACE 

Of all the peoples upon whom this war has 
brought calamity and suffering, the Armenian 
people have had the most to endure. Great as 
has been the misery inflicted by the invaders upon 
the non-combatant populations of Belgium and 
Northern France, upon Poland, upon Serbia, 
the misery of Armenia, though far less known 
to the outer world, has been far more terrible. 

When the European War broke out, in 1914, 
the Government of the Turkish Empire had 
fallen into the hands of a small gang of unscru- 
pulous ruffians calling themselves the Conmiittee 
of Union and Progress, who were ruling through 
their command of the army, but in the name of 
the harmless and imbecile Sultan. By means 
which have not been fully disclosed, but the na- 
ture of which can be easily conjectured, this gang 
were won over to serve the interests of Germany ; 
and at Germany's bidding they declared war 
against the Western Allies, thus dragging all 
the subjects of Turkey, Muslim and Christian, 
into a conflict with which they had no concern. 
The Armenian Christians scattered through the 

ix 



X PREFACE 

Asiatic part of the Turkish dominions, having 
had melancholy experience in the Adana massa- 
cres some years previously of what cruelties the 
ruling gang were capable of perpetrating, were 
careful to remain quiet, and to furnish no pretext 
to the Turkish authorities for an attack upon 
them. But the rulers of Turkey showed that they 
did not need a pretext for the execution of the 
nefarious purposes they cherished. They had 
formed a design for the extermination of the non- 
Mohammedan elements in the population of Asi- 
atic Turkey, in order to make what they called 
a homogeneous nation, consisting of Moham- 
medans only. The wickedness of such a design 
was equalled only by its blind folly, for the 
Christian Armenians of Asia Minor and the 
north-eastern provinces constituted the most in- 
dustrious, the most intelligent, and the best- 
educated part of the population. Most of the 
traders and merchants, nearly all the skilled 
artisans, were Armenians, and to destroy them 
was to destroy the chief industrial asset which 
these regions possessed. However, this was the 
plan of the Committee of Union and Progress, 
and as soon as they began to feel, in the spring 
of 1915, that the Allied expedition against the 
Dardanelles was not likely to succeed, they pro- 
ceeded to execute it. They first disarmed all the 



PREFACE XI 

Armenians in order to have them at their mercy; 
and in some cases, in order to make it appear that 
the Armenians were intending to take up arms, 
they actually sent weapons into the towns and 
then had tliem seized as evidence against the 
Christians. When such arms as the Christians 
possessed had been secured, orders for massacre 
were issued from Constantinople to the local 
governors. The whole Armenian population was 
seized. The grown men were slaughtered with- 
out mercy. The younger women were sold in the 
market place to the highest bidder, or appropri- 
ated by Turkish military officers and civil officials 
to become slaves in Turkish harems. The boys 
were handed over to dervishes to be carried off 
and brought up as Muslims. The rest of the 
hapless victims, all the older men and women, the 
mothers and their babes clinging to them, were 
torn from their homes and driven out along the 
tracks which led into the desert region of north- 
ern Syria and Arabia. Most of them perished 
on the way from hardships, from disease, from 
starvation. A few were still surviving some 
months ago near Aleppo and along the banks of 
the Euphrates. Many, probably thousands, were 
drowned in that river and its tributaries, martyrs 
to their Christian faith, which they had refused 
to renounce; for it was generally possible for 



xii PREFACE 

women, and sometimes for men, to save them- 
selves by accepting Mohammedanism. By these 
various methods hundreds of thousands — ^the 
number is variously estimated at from 500,000 
to 800,000 — ^have perished. And all this was 
done with the tacit acquiescence of the German 
Government, some of whose representatives on 
the spot are even said to have encouraged the 
Turks in their work of slaughter, while the 
Government confined its action to propagating 
in Germany, so as to deceive its own people, false 
stories which alleged that the Armenians had 
been punished for insurrectionary movements. 

All these facts, with many details too horrible 
to be repeated here, are set forth in the Blue- 
book recently published in England, containing 
accounts based upon incontrovertible evidence, 
and to which no reply has been made, though 
some denials, palpably false, have emanated from 
the Turkish gang, and some others from the Ger- 
man Government. 

The victims who have thus been put to death, 
a large part of the whole Armenian people, be- 
long to what is one of the oldest nations in the 
world, which has been Christian and civilized ever 
since the third century of our era. If any people 
ever deserved the sympathy of the civilized world, 
it is they who have clung to their faith and the 



PREFACE xiii 

traditions of their ancient kingdom ever since 
that kingdom was overthrown by the Turkish 
invaders many centuries ago. They now appeal 
to the AUied Nations who are fighting the battle 
of Right and Humanity against the German 
Government and its barbarous Turkish allies, 
asking that when the end of the war comes their 
case may be considered and they may be for ever 
delivered from the Turkish yoke. Nowhere is 
their hard case better known than in the United 
States, for it is the American missionaries who 
have, by their admirable schools and colleges 
planted in many cities of Asiatic Turkey, done 
more for them than any other country has done, 
giving them light, consolation and sympathy. 

The author of this little book is an Armenian 
gentleman belonging to a family originally from 
Ispahan in Persia, but now settled in England. 
He speaks with intimate knowledge as well as 
with patriotic feeling, and states the case of his 
countrymen with a moderation well fitted to 
inspire confidence. Upon the arguments he puts 
forward I do not venture to express any opinion 
in detail. But those who know something of 
Asiatic Turkey will recognize with him that the 
Armenians are, by their intelligence and their 
irrepressible energy, the race best fitted to restore 



xiv PREFACE 

prosperity to regions desolated by Turkish op- 
pression. The educated Armenians, notwith- 
standing all they have suffered, are abreast of 
the modern world of civilization. Among them 
are many men of science and learning, as well as 
artists and poets. They are scattered in many 
lands. I have visited large Armenian colonies as 
far west as California, and there are others as far 
east as Rangoon. Many of the exiles would re- 
turn to their ancient home if they could but be 
guaranteed that security and peace which they 
have never had, and can never have, under the 
rule of the Turk. May we not confidently hope 
that the Allied Powers will find means for giving 
it to them at the end of this war, for extending 
to them that security which they have long desired 
and are capable of using well? 

Bryce. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. ARMENIA AS A WAR ISSUE GREATEST SUF- 
FERER FROM TURKO-PRUSSIAN "fRIGHTFUL- 
NESS" — EFFECT ON AMERICAN OPINION . 19 

II. ARMENIA AND REPARATION ARMENIA'S MAR- 
TYRDOM CONDEMNATION AND DEMAND FOR 

REPARATION INADEQUATELY EXPRESSED . 27 

III. "the GENTLE AND CLEAN-FIGHTING Turk" . 37 

IV. ANGLO-RUSSIAN FRIENDSHIP A VITAL NECES- 

SITY FOR PEACE AND PROGRESS IN ASIA 

MOSLEMS AND TURKISH RULE ^ARMENIANS 

PROGRESSIVE AND DEMOCRATIC BY TEMPERA- 
MENT 53 

V. ARMENIA AS A PEACE PROBLEM VIEWS OF THE 

"MANCHESTER GUARDIAN" AND THE "SPEC- 
TATOR" CAN ARMENIANS STAND ALONE 

AMONG THE KURDS? AMERICAN OPINION 

AND THE FUTURE OF ARMENIA .... 62 

VI. Armenia's services in the war .... 76 

VII. ARMENIA THE BATTLE-GROUND OF ASIA MINOR 

AND VICTIM OF CONTENDING EMPIRES . . 89 

VIII. THE BLUE-BOOK THE EPIC OF ARMENIA'S MAR- 
TYRDOM, THE REVELATION OF HER SPIRIT 
AND CHARACTER " TRUTH " ON THE ARME- 
NIANS*. A DIGRESSION 101 

XV 



xvi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IX. EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE-BOOK .... 118 
X. GREAT BRITAIN AND ARMENIA THE LATE DUKE 

OF Argyll's views — an appeal to Britain 142 

XI. AN APPEAL TO THE COMING PEACE CONFERENCE 159 



POSTSCRIPT .... 177 

APPENDIX . . < . 185 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



ARMENIA AS A "WAR ISSUE GREATEST SUFFERER FROM 

TURKO-PRUSSIAN "fRIGHTFULNESS" EFFECT ON 

AMERICAN OPINION 



THE first ofBcial advance for peace made by 
Germany and her Allies, although couched 
in defiant and menacing terms, was nevertheless 
an unmistakable signal of distress, and has 
brought the world within measurable distance of 
that just and durable peace which the Allies have 
set out to achieve. The prospect of approaching 
peace has set on foot a general reiteration of the 
issues at stake, and consideration of the terms 
and problems of peace. Public attention in this 
country will naturally be occupied, in the first 
place, with the momentous issues and interests of 
the United Kingdom, the British Empire and 
her Allies raised by the war and to be settled and 
secured by the impending peace. It will there- 
fore, I hope, not be considered amiss or pre- 

19 



go ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

mature for a member of one of those small and 
oppressed peoples engulfed in the vortex of the 
war who look to Great Britain and her Allies 
for deliverance, reparation and the security of 
their future liberty, to put before the British 
public his views, as well as facts and arguments 
that may be of some service in enabling it to form 
a just estimate of the claims and merits of one of 
the smaller problems which run the risk of not 
receiving a full hearing at the Peace Conference, 
in the presence of a multitude of larger and more 
important questions. 

The item in the Allied peace terms stated in 
their reply to President Wilson's note, "the set- 
ting free of the populations subject to the bloody 
tyranny of the Turks," is the bearer to Arme- 
nians of a message of comfort and hope. It her- 
alds the dawn of a new day that will mark the 
end of the long and hideous nightmare of Turk- 
ish tyranny. 

If President Wilson, the American people, 
or other neutrals were in search of evidence that 
would prove to them conclusively which of the 
two groups of belligerents is sincere in its profes- 
sions of regard for "the rights and privileges of 
weak peoples and small states"; if Belgium had 
not been violated and ravaged; if the Lusitania 
and so many hospital ships, liners and merchant- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 21 

men had not been sunk without any care as to the 
fate of the wounded, the children and women, 
the non-combatant men and crews; if Zeppelins 
had not spread death and destruction among 
women and children in their homes in the night; 
if all these and so many other outrages had not 
been committed, and there had been, in the whole 
course of the war, no other act of the Quadruple 
Alliance in any degree contrary to the laws and 
usages of civilized warfare and dictates of hu- 
manity, the single word Armenia would provide 
that proof — a crushing, monumental proof — as 
to who is and who is not sincere in the professions 
of regard for right, justice and humanity. The 
spirit of desolated Armenia stands at the head 
of the phantom spirits of outraged humanity, 
which must rise and shatter to atoms every mask 
of benevolence, righteousness and injured inno- 
cence that the protagonists of "frightfulness" 
may assume for the deception of their own peo- 
ples and neutrals. 

But in the United States at least there is no 
need for any fresh proof or explanation of the 
issue at this stage, and the martyrdom of Ar- 
menia has contributed largely to that state of 
American opinion. I have little doubt that Pres- 
ident Wilson's Peace Note and speech to the 
Senate are the first steps towards America cast- 



22 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

ing her whole weight into the scale, aiming at the 
realization of a just and lasting peace. 

The intense interest evinced by the people and 
Government of the United States in the fate of 
Armenia and the Armenians is abundantly shown 
not only by the generous gifts of money for the 
relief of the survivors and the noble personal 
services by devoted missionaries and relief agents, 
some of whom lost their lives in their work of 
mercy; but also by diplomatic action on behalf 
of the Armenians in Constantinople (where Mr. 
Morgenthau, to his great honour, struggled vali- 
antly to stay the hand of the ruthless oppressor) , 
and by the prominence given to any and every 
scrap of news concerning the holocaust in Ar- 
menia. It is no exaggeration to say that, military 
operations apart, no incident of the war, not 
excepting the violation and martyrdom of Bel- 
gium, has been given more space and prominence 
in the American Press than anything connected 
with the martyrdom of Armenia and Syria and 
the relief of the refugees and exiles. 

In his reply to the Armenian deputation who 
on December 14, 1916, presented to him an illu- 
minated parchment from the Catholicos express- 
ing His Holiness's gratitude and thanks to the 
American nation, President Wilson said, inter 
alia — 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 2S 

*'We have tried to do what was possible to 
save your people from the ravages of war. My 
great regret is, that we have been able to accom- 
plish so little. There have been many suffering 
peoples as the result of that terrible struggle, and 
the lot of none has touched the American heart 
more than the suffering of the Armenians,' 



J3\ 



Nothing in the war has brought home to the 
people of the United States the moral issues of 
the war more strongly and vividly than the un- 
precedented barbarities committed by the Turks 
in their diabolical attempt to wipe out the Ar- 
menian race. No event of the war has been more 
damaging to the Central Powers in the eyes of 
the United States. Here they have seen the ruth- 
less spirit of the twin enemies of humanity and 
liberty — the Turkish yatagan supported by the 
Prussian jack-boot — in its hideous nakedness, at 
work in the depths of Asia, unrestrained and un- 
perceived, as they thought, by the light of civili- 
zation. 

This gospel of the jack-boot and the yatagan 
will be best illustrated by putting side by side two 
quotations, one from the Tanine, the official 
organ of the Committee of Union and Progress 

^ Quoted in The New Armenia of New York, January 1^ 
1917. The italics are mine. 



24 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

in Constantinople, and the other from a state- 
ment made by Count Reventlow in October 
1915. The Tanine "invited the Government to 
exterminate or forcibly convert to Islam all Ar- 
menian women in Turkey as the only means of 
saving the Ottoman Empire."^ Count Revent- 
low, the high priest of the gospel of Brute 
Force and Militarism, writing in the Tages- 
zeitwng in defence and approval of Turkey's 
appalling crime, said that it was the Ottoman 
Government's obvious right and duty to take 
the strongest repressive measures against "the 
bloodthirsty Armenians" — the measures advo- 
cated by the Tanine, which were carried out by 
Count Reventlow's worthy allies on the Bospho- 
rus with a completeness and ferocity that must 
have greatly pleased him. 

The German Government and German apolo- 
gists have made a great parade of the use of 
Indian and African troops in Europe by the 
Allies. By all reports, these troops have fought 
as clean a fight as any troops in the war. I think 
that in the judgment of future historians no inci- 
dent of this war, whose history is so heavily shad- 
owed on one side with outrages and violations of 
the laws of civilized warfare, will meet with so 
strong a condemnation as Germany's alliance 

^Quoted in Guerre Sociale (Paris), September 16, 1915. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 25 

with the Young Turks, the declaration of a "holy 
war" at her behest, and its dire consequences for 
the already sorely tried Christian subjects of the 
Turks. ( It should be remembered that Germany 
and Austria are signatories to the Treaty of 
Berhn, Art. 61 of which was to have brought 
about "the improvements and reforms demanded 
by local requirements in the provinces inhabited 
by the Armenians," and to have "guaranteed 
their security against the Kurds and Circas- 
sians." This point cannot be too strongly em- 
phasized.) She could have foreseen these conse- 
quences; and if she did not foresee them, she 
could have stopped them when they made them- 
selves apparent. Turkey's entry into the war 
placed her Christian subjects in a position of 
great peril, as it has been her custom to wreak 
upon them her vengeance for defeats; while a 
state of war freed her from the moral restraint 
of Europe. It was hoped that German and 
Austrian influence would check this tendency. 
How cruelly events have shattered that hope! 
They have proved that it was too much to expect 
humanity and the ordinary feelings of chivalry 
and compassion for the honour and suiFering of 
women and children from the State policies of 
these great Christian Governments and the ma- 
jority of their agents in Turkey. I do not believe 



26 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

that this ungodly and inhuman policy has re- 
ceived general approbation either in Germany 
or Austria-Hungary. This is evident from the 
quotations from German missionary journals in 
the Blue-book on the "Treatment of Armenians 
in the Ottoman Empire."^ It is also proved by 
the protests addressed to the Imperial Chancellor 
by several Catholic and Protestant organizations. 

■^ The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 
Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, Secre- 
tary of State for Foreign Affairs, with a preface by Vis- 
count Bryce (Hodder & Stoughton). 



II 



ARMENIA AND REPARATION ARMENIa's MARTYRDOM 

CONDEMNATION AND DEMAND FOR REPARATION IN- 
ADEQUATElrY EXPRESSED 

THE Governments of the Allies have unani- 
mously declared that peace is only possible 
on the principles of adequate reparation for the 
past, adequate security for the future, and rec- 
ognition of the principle of nationalities and of 
the free existence of small states. 

"Reparation" means no doubt in the first place 
reparation for the wanton and ruthless destruc- 
tion of unoffending and defenceless civilian lives 
and property. 

It is characteristic of the British sense of jus- 
tice and fair play that Belgium, France and 
Serbia should be given the first place in their 
demand for reparation, for, of course, there are 
the British victims of "f rightfulness," Zeppelin 
and submarine victims and the victims of judicial 
murders to be atoned for and recompensed. 

This unanimous demand for reparation to the 
smaller nations for all they have suffered as a 

27 



28 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

result of the brutal and unscrupulous aggression 
of their more powerful neighbours, and their se- 
curity and free development, augurs well for the 
future. It is an earnest given by the Entente 
Powers to the world, of the sincerity of their 
declarations regarding the unselfish, just and 
worthy objects which they entered the war to 
attain. 

I must be excused, however, if I confess to 
feeling not a little perplexity at the fact that, in 
discussing the peace terms, the great organs of 
British public opinion, with some notable excep- 
tions,^ have made little or no reference to Arme- 
nia in the demand for penalties, reparation and 
redemption. This fact must have impressed Mr. 
Arthur Henderson, who, in his reference to Ar- 
menia quoted more fully elsewhere, remarked 
that "... Armenian atrocities were not much 
talked about here . . . etc." My anxiety will 
be understood when I point out that for us it is 
not a question of a little more or less territory, 

^ Armenians are especially indebted to the Manchester 
Guardian and The Times for their valuable services to 
their cause, humanity and truth in exposing the reign of 
terror in Armenia and the Turk's affectation of "clean- 
fighting/' Part 101 of The Times History and Encyclo- 
pcedia of the War was the first detailed account of what 
had happened in Armenia since the outbreak of war, and I 
may add that, considering the difficulties of obtaining in- 
formation, it is a remarkably well-informed account. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 29 

a little larger or smaller indemnity. For us more 
than for any other race involved in the war it is 
a question of "to be or not to be" in a real and 
fateful sense: the rebirth of Armenian national- 
ity from the profusion of its lost blood and heaps 
of smouldering ashes, or the end of that long- 
cherished and bled-for aspiration, and the con- 
summation of the "policy" of Abdul Hamid and 
the Young Turks. 

The first general discussion of the terms of 
peace has coincided with the publication, as a 
Blue-book, of Lord Bryce's comprehensive doc- 
umentary evidence on the attempt of the Turks 
to murder the Armenian nation in cold blood. 
I gratefully acknowledge the fact that many 
newspapers wrote sympathetic editorial articles 
or reviews on the Blue-book, emphasizing, with 
incontestable force, that this conclusive evidence 
of the abominable crimes committed by the Turks 
in Armenia without any protest from official 
Germany, is a crushing reply to the German 
Chancellor's protestations of solicitude for hu- 
manity. 

But, opportune as has been the immediate 
effect of this fresh evidence of Lord Bryce's 
noble and untiring labours in the cause of human- 
ity, as a tragic and terrible exposure of the irony 
of the Central Powers' professions of pity for 



so ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

suffering humanity, that is surely not the only 
or the principal moral to be drawn from these 
haunting pages. They constitute a terrible and 
lasting reproach to the European diplomacy of 
our time. They unfold to the horrified gaze of 
mankind a vast column of human smoke and 
human anguish rising to the heavens as the in- 
cense of the most fearful yet most glorious mass- 
martyrdom the world has ever seen, but casting 
a shadow of lasting shame upon Christendom and 
civilization. The unparalleled outburst of bar- 
barity they reveal did not come as a surprise. 
Europe had heard its premonitory rumblings 
these last forty years. As far back as 1880 the 
representatives of the Great Powers in their 
famous and futile Identic Note to the Sublime 
Porte, said^ "So desperate was the misgovern- 
ment of the country that it would lead in all prob- 
ability to the destruction of the Christian popula- 
tion of vast districts." The massacres of 1895- 
1896 and 1909 cost the lives of 250,000 to 300,000 
Armenians. But most of the European states- 
men of the day persistently refused to believe 
that "the gentle Turk" was capable of such bursts 
of unspeakable barbarism; while Bismarck de- 
clared openly that the whole Eastern Question 
was not worth "the bones of a Pomeranian grena- 
dier." His successors have followed and im- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 31 

proved upon his ruthless, unchristian policy, and 
Europe sees the result. 

With due respect to the small minority of 
humane Turks, who, I dare say, are themselves 
shocked at what their rulers, their soldiery and 
populace have proved themselves capable of, the 
Turk as a race has added yet another and vaster 
monument than ever before to the long series of 
similar monuments that fill the pages of his blood- 
stained history, in proof of the unchangeable 
brutality of his nature. You cannot reason or 
argue with him. Nor can you expect justice or 
ordinary human feelings from such a nature. 
The only sane and honest way to deal with him 
is to make him innocuous. It is official Europe 
that is to blame for leaving him so long at large 
and his prey at his mercy. It is European diplo- 
macy of the past forty years that is responsible 
for looking on while the relentless mutilation was 
going on limb by limb, until Moloch saw his 
chance in the war and all but devoured his hap- 
less victim, with the tacit acquiescence of the 
Governments of two great Christian empires, and 
the applause of Count Reventlow and his dis- 
ciples. 

How is it to be explained that this deliberately 
planned destruction of more than half a million 
human beings by all the tortures of the Dark 



32 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Ages, and the deportation and enslavement worse 
than death of more than half a million, have not 
aroused the righteous wrath of the great British 
writers and thinkers of the day to nearly the 
same extent as the martyrdom of Belgium? How 
is it that great writers and poets have not felt 
the call of expressing to the world in the language 
of genius the stupefying horror as well as the 
moral grandeur of this vast, unparalleled trag- 
edy?^ Great Britain has always been, and is 
to-day more than ever, the champion and "the 
hope of the oppressed and the despair of the op- 
pressor." That sympathy, horror and indigna- 
tion exist in this country in the fullest measure 
there is not the slightest doubt. One sees proofs 
and indications of their existence at every turn. 
But why, in Heaven's name, is it not proclaimed 
to the world that the culprits may know and 
tremble and stay their hand? Bishops have been 
burnt to death, hundreds of churches desecrated, 

^ Mr. Israel Zangwill concludes a moving and eloquent 
tribute to the agony of Armenia in The New Armenia 
(New York) of March 1, 1917, entitled "The Majesty of 
Armenia," in the following words — "I bow before this 
higher majesty of sorrow. I take the crown of thorns 
from Israel's head and I place it upon Armenia's.'* 

Is it not a strange fact that of all contemporary authors 
and publicists of note_, it should have fallen to a famous 
and gifted Jew to pay the first tribute to "the majesty" of 
Armenia's martyrdom for the Christian faith? 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 33 

and ministers of Christ tortured and murdered; 
hundreds of thousands of Christian women and 
children done to death in circumstances of un- 
speakable barbarity and bestiality. Why are the 
Churches of Great Britain and all Christendom 
not raising a cry of indignation that will reverber- 
* ate throughout the world and strike the fear of 
God into the hearts of these assassins and all 
powers of darkness? Why is not a word said as 
a tribute, so richly deserved, to the heroic and 
indomitable spirit of the men and women and 
even children who chose torture and death rather 
than deny their Christ, sacrifice their honour or 
renounce their nationality?^ Here is assuredly 
the most inspiring example of all times of the 
triumph of the spirit of Christ and the fidelity in 
death to conscience, personal honour and inde- 

^ Mr. P. W. Wilson's sympathetic and appreciative ar- 
ticles in The Westminster Gazette and The Daily News 
and Leader of February S, 1917, appeared after the above 
was written. While I am most grateful to Mr. Wilson and 
the two great organs of British public opinion, I avail 
myself of this opportunity to make one or two observa- 
tions on some of the points Mr. Wilson has raised — 

"The first impulse of the refugee" has not only been 
"to start a shop" but also to start a school and improvise 
the means of continuing the publication of the newspaper 
he was publishing in Van before the exile^, as the Belgians 
have done here under more favourable circumstances. The 
toleration practised by Armenians and their Church is not 
due to adversity, but the true understanding of Christian- 
ity. The spirit of toleration breathes through the pages 



34 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

pendence, over savage fury and brutal lust at 
the highest pitch ever attained in them by fiends 
in human form ; a triumph and an example more 
inspiring, and with a deeper and more lasting 
significance for humanity and Christianity, per- 
haps, than this great and terrible war itself ; and 
the Churches and spokesmen and writers of great 
Christian countries, belligerent and neutral, pass 
over that aspect of the Great Tragedy almost in 
complete silence ! 

of the history of the Armenian Church from the earliest 
times. 

Mr. Wilson says: "It is doubtless regrettable that the 
Armenians should have failed to recommend their progres- 
sive conception of life to the Moslems around them." This 
is a striking example of the misconception that so often 
exists in the minds of even the most sympathetic observers 
of Armenian affairs. Mr. Wilson knows no doubt for how 
much prestige counts in the East. If the European mis- 
sions with all the prestige of their great nations, govern- 
ments, embassies, consulates, etc., behind them (to say 
nothing of the unlimited funds at their disposal) have had 
such little success in Moslem countries, is it reasonable to 
blame the Armenians, oppressed, harried, tortured, massa- 
cred, plunged into the depths of misery, for not having 
fared better? What respect could the Armenian's religion 
inspire among his Mpslem neighbours who murdered his 
bishops and priests, desecrated his churches and inflicted 
the most revolting insults upon the outward symbols of 
his faith, while his powerful co-religionists stood by and 
did nothing? Under these circumstances what better 
service could the Armenian render his religion than die 
for it? In happier days, the early Armenian Christians 
were largely instrumental in converting the Georgians. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 35 

I do not ask tributes for the martyrs ; let their 
praise be sung by the hosts of heaven. Nor is 
this a complaint; and it would be a presumption 
on my part to assume the role of critic or mentor 
to leaders of religion, thought and learning in 
great Christian countries. It is far indeed from 
my intention to assume such a role. But these 
are facts which I contemplate with inexpressible 
sorrow, almost despair — facts which perplex and 
puzzle me and which surpass my understanding. 
Perhaps my judgment is dimmed and embittered 
by my nation's sufferings. If that is so, is any 
one surprised that the Armenian soul should be 
bitter to-day, bitter with a bitterness, anguish 
and indignation such as the soul of man has never 
tasted before, or any people can possibly ima- 
gine ? 

Some papers speak of the sufferings of the 
Ai'menians being equal to those of the Belgians. 

Armenians know, if any one does, what bond- 
age and suffering under the tyrant's heel mean, 
and they yield to none in their profound sympa- 
thy and admiration for heroic Belgium, Serbia 
and the occupied parts of France. The martjrr- 
dom of 5000 unoffending Belgian civilians is a 
horrible enough episode, but surely there is some 
difference between 5000 and 600,000 victims, to 
say nothing of the 600,000 who were enslaved. 



36 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

forcibly converted to Islam, and driven in cara- 
vans of torture and death to the Mesopotamian 
deserts/ What is the condition of these unfor- 
tunates, and how many have survived, must re- 
main a dread secret of the desert until the end of 
the war. 

Is it because the victims are Armenians, mere 
Armenians so used to massacre, so long aban- 
doned by Europe to the lust and pleasure of "the 
Gentle Turk"? That may be so in the eyes of 
men. But there is God, and in His eyes the life 
and pain and torture and death of an Armenian 
child, woman, or man are the same, exactly the 
same, as those of any other child, woman, or man 
without exception. 

'^ It is some consolation to know, as some reports say, 
that the Arabs have treated these unfortunates kindly. It 
is an indication of — and a credit to — their superior civil- 
ization. 



Ill 



"the gentle and clean-fighting Turk" ^ 



THE Allies have declared in their reply to 
President Wilson that one of their aims is 
*'the turning out of Europe of the Ottoman Em- 
pire, as decidedly foreign to Western civiliza- 
tion" 

■•^ Since this chapter was written, the following authori- 
tative and imp *- piece of evidence on this much-de- 
bated subject appeared in The Weekly Dispatch of 
March 4, 1917, from the pen of General Sir O'Moore 
Creagh, V.C— 

"... I have experience of the Turk. He is a merci- 
less oppressor, whose real character is often hidden behind 
a pleasant manner, and who is ready to cut your throat 
with a sort of savage courtesy. Appeal to Kis fanaticism, 
and in the trenches he has no fear of death; but he is very 
subject, in case of reverse, to cowardly panic, which to a 
considerable extent detracts from his worth as a sol- 
dier. . . . 

"I know some of our men who have met the Turk both 
on the Tigris and in Gallipoli speak of him as a clean 
fighter. Certainly when he meets his match he fights 
fairly enough, but when he is an easy victor he is remorse- 
less and merciless; and robs, murders, and ravishes with 
the unrestrained savagery which lies at the base of his 
character. The British prisoners taken by the Turk in the 
present war have been disgracefully treated, and, as we 

37 



88 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

This fact of the Turk being "decidedly foreign 
to Western civilization," affirmed on the author- 
ity and conviction of the Governments of four 
of the greatest and most advanced nations of 
Europe, needs no further proof. Nevertheless 
it seems desirable, in the interests of truth, to en- 
deavour to dissipate the misconception that has 
been created by the extraordinary myth of "the 
clean-fighting Turk." 

There has been a disposition in this country, 
natural and intelligible under the circumstances, 
to attribute the recent (let us hope the last) and 
most terrible of the Armenian massacres wholly 
or largely to German influence. That the Ger- 
man Government had it in its power to stop this 
gigantic crime if it had so wished, there is no 
doubt. It seems likely also that the Turk applied 
to his brutal scheme the method and thoroughness 
he had learned from his German ally. But seri- 
ously to assert, as some writers and speakers have 
done, that German influence instigated the massa- 
cres, is to shut one's eyes to the Turk's record 
ever since he became known to history. One 
need only turn the pages of his history — a verita- 

know, denied clothing, medicine, and the ordinary neces- 
saries of life, starved, and even refused shelter in extremes 
of heat and cold. The people who are always ready to 
praise the Turk as a clean fighter should remember that 
he has a lot to answer for in the present war." 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 39 

ble chamber of horrors — to convince oneself that 
massacre, outrage, and devastation have always 
been congenial to the Turk. 

Without for a moment wishing to absolve the 
German Government of its responsibility, before 
God and humanity, for not exerting its influence 
to save more than a million absolutely innocent 
human beings from death, slow torture, and slav- 
ery: the fact, nevertheless, remains that Hulagu, 
Sultan Selim, Bayazid and Abdul Hamid were 
not under German influence, that there were no 
Germans at the sack of Constantinople or the 
massacres of Bagdad and Sivas, or, in more re- 
cent times, at the butcheries of Chios, Greece, 
Crete, Batak, Macedonia, Sassoon, Urfa, or 
Adana. The Turk, in fact, has nothing to learn 
from his Teutonic ally in "frightfulness" ; he has 
a great deal to teach him. I readily admit that 
there are some Turks who are gentle and good 
men. Some of these have risked good positions 
and even their lives to protect Armenian women 
and children. But most unfortunately for us, 
for humanity and for the Turks themselves, such 
good Turks are few and far between. 

It is true that orders for the extirpation of the 
Armenians were issued from Constantinople, but 
can any one imagine such revolting orders being 
carried out by "gentle and clean-fighting" troops 



40 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



i 



and people? I shall be much surprised if any 
unprejudiced man or woman in any civilized 
country believes that any but the Turkish popu- 
lace and soldiery would be capable of carrying 
out such orders. History at any rate has given us 
no such evidence. 

I believe that, under a just and honest govern- 
ment and better influences, the Turkish peasant 
will, in course of time, lose his proneness to 
cruelty, for he has good qualities. But if this war 
is intended to see the end of tyranny, oppression, 
brutal religious and political persecution and the 
discontent and unrest that such conditions always 
produce; if it is to prevent the possibility of a 
repetition of the hell that the Turks have let loose 
in Armenia since they entered the war and so 
often before the war; then it is clear that never 
again must the Turk be allowed to possess the 
power over other races, which he has so abom- 
inably abused ever since he "hacked his way ' 
through" to the fair, fertile and once highly pros- 
perous country which he has devastated and con- 
verted into a charnel-house. 

The Armenians of Turkey had no separatist 
aspirations. They knew that was impracticable. 
Nothing would have suited them better than a 
reformed government in Turkey, that would give 
them security of life, honour and property, the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 41 

free development of their national and religious 
institutions and an approach to equality with 
Moslems before the law. On the promulgation 
of the Constitution, all the Armenian revolu- 
tionary societies were transformed into peaceable 
and orderly political parties as by magic. They 
had great hopes of achieving these aims and the 
regeneration of the Ottoman Empire from within 
in co-operation with the Young Turks before the 
war, and they gave the Committee of Union and 
Progress (was there ever a more incongruous 
misnomer?) all the support they could, which was 
by no means negligible ; but they had not long to 
wait to be completely and bitterly disillusioned. 
The Adana massacres gave their hopes the first 
blow. The Armenian leaders proved too earnest 
and sincere democrats for the Committee leaders 
who, with few exceptions, were actuated, as 
events proved, more by inordinate personal am- 
bition than the "liberty" and "equality" which 
they so loudly proclaimed and which have proved 
such a hideous mockery. The chauvinistic wing 
soon gained complete ascendancy over the party, 
which resolved on the covert of forcible "Otto- 
manization" of all non-Turk races of the Empire 
(as is proved by the recent exposures of the 
Grand Sheriff of Mecca), and ended by joining 



42 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the Germans in the war in the hope of conquering 
Egypt and the Caucasus. 

It is a mistake to think that Germany forced 
Turkey into the war against her will by the pres- 
ence of the Goeben and Breslau, Those who had 
any knowledge of Turkish affairs had no doubt 
of the existence of a military understanding be- 
tween Germany and Turkey for some years be- 
fore the war. The arrival of a military mission 
at Constantinople under Liman von Sanders left 
no doubt on that point. 

On the outbreak of the European war, the 
Armenian Dashnakist Party met in congress at 
Erzerum to determine the attitude to be observed 
by the Party in relation to the war. Hearing of 
this, the Young Turks forthwith sent representa- 
tives to ascertain the attitude of the Party in the 
event of Turkey going to war against Russia. 
(See Blue-book, p. 80.) This took place some 
weeks before the arrival of the Goeben and Bres- 
lau at Constantinople. Nor was the war as un- 
popular with the Turkish masses at the outset 
as is thought by many. If that were so there 
would have been a revolt against the Young 
Turks, and Turkey would have been detached 
from the Central Powers long ago. It may be 
less popular now, because their dreams of con- 
quest have been shattered and the whole country 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 4^ 

is suiFering. No Turk, Young or Old, had any 
particular objection to the prospects of the con- 
quest either of Egypt or the Caucasus, and many 
of them aimed at a Moslem Triple Alliance be- 
tween Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan under 
German auspices, and even dreamt dreams of an 
empu-e that would ultimately embrace India and 
the whole of Northern Africa!' 

The Young Turks have tried their hand at the 
government of the Ottoman Empire, and have 
failed more completely and proved infinitely 
more cruel and brutal than the Old Turks. Be- 
sides this, their betrayal of the Entente Powers 
and the vast and unprecedented crime which they 
have committed against humanity have left only 
one solution possible that holds out .any promise 
of peace, justice and normal progress in the fu- 
ture. That one solution is, to draw up a new 
map of the Ottoman Empire on the basis of 
nationality and historical rights, reparation in 
proportion to services and sacrifices during the 
war, and the proved aptitude of the races con- 
cerned for progress and development on the lines 
of Western civilization. 

There has long existed in Europe a school of 
politicians who have always asked: "If you elim- 
inate Turkish rule over the Turks' subject races, 

^ See Appendix, p. 188. 



44 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

what will you put in its place?" After what has 
happened in Armenia and Syria, he would be a 
bold man or a prejudiced man who would deny 
that any change will be an improvement. 

The unfitness of the Turk to govern alien, and 
especially Christian peoples has been proved by 
such an overwhelming accumulation of historical 
evidence and rivers of innocent Christian blood, 
that to urge the contrary must appear like an 
attempt to obscure the sun by the palm of the 
hand. 

If this war is to bring peace and progress to 
Asia Minor instead of chronic anarchy, blood- 
shed and devastation as in the past, there must 
be an end of Turkish domination over alien 
races in any shape or form. By all means give 
the Turk the chance of governing himself in the 
provinces inhabited purely by Turks. 

During the Turkish retreat from Thrace in 
1913, the evidence of newspaper correspondents 
was that the Turk was leaving Europe in the 
same state — moral, material and intellectual — 
as he entered it four centuries ago. The fact is, 
that centuries of contact with civilization has 
made no difference to the nature of the Turk. 
War brings to the surface the true nature of a 
people as nothing else can. The Turk has proved 
by his conduct in this war that he is as cruel and 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 45 

brutal as he was when he first swooped down as 
the scourge of God in Asia Minor one thousand 
years ago. By centuries of conquest and domina- 
tion he has acquired an attractive free and easy 
outward manner which has stamped him a "gen- 
tleman" in the eyes of European travellers. But 
the same "gentleman" who will charm you with 
his manner will murder or enslave any number 
of women and children without the slightest 
twinge of conscience. Such is the Turkish "gen- 
tleman." The Turks are to-day proving their 
gratitude for a hundred years of British and 
French support by throwing the whole of their 
man-power and resources — largely built up by 
British and French capital — into the scale on the 
side of Germany. They have put at the disposal 
of Germany and held for Germany the land 
routes by which alone she can hope to threaten 
the British and French colonial empires. They 
have done their best to do England and her Allies 
all the injury they can, and have given the ene- 
mies of England all the help they can. And still 
the Turk and even the Young Turk have friends 
and protectors in this country.^ This, to my 

^ See Sir Edwin Pears's article in The Contemporary 
Review, October 191 6. (I note this with the deepest 
regret, for Armenians are under a heavy debt of gratitude 
to Sir Edwin Pears for his generous and authoritative 
defence of their cause in the past.) 



46 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

mind, is the most astonishing phenomenon of the 
whole war. It must appear strange to thinking 
Moslems that there should be found, in great and 
mighty Christian countries, respected and prom- 
inent men who defend the Young Turks at the 
very moment when their proteges are persecut- 
ing and massacring their weak and defenceless 
co-religionists in countless thousands. I gravely 
doubt whether such an act is calculated to enhance 
the prestige of Christianity in the eyes of the 
Moslem world. 

Have the apologists of the Turks ever put 
themselves this question: "If under German in- 
fluence the Turks have been capable of attempt- 
ing the cold-blooded murder of a whole nation, 
how is the fact to be explained, that under the 
same influence they were able to gain the repu- 
tation of 'clean fighters'?" 

The irony of it all is, that in a war in which 
more than twenty difl*erent nations are engaged, 
the Turk and the Turk alone among the belliger- 
ents should have gained the epithet of "clean- 
fighter," though, note well, from one of his ad- 
versaries only. How is this fact to be explained? 
Is it seriously claimed that the Turk has proved 
himself, under the test of war, superior in morals 
and chivalry to all the nations of Europe? 

Turkish mentality is not understood in West- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 47 

ern Europe. The Turk has a fanatical bravery 
which, however, easily degenerates into brutality. 
The Russians, Rumanians and Serbs have fought 
the Turks for centuries. It would be interesting 
to have their opinion of his "clean-fighting" qual- 
ities. The fact is, the Turk knows he may need 
English help again some day. He knows that 
there has long existed in England a school of 
politicians which has believed that British inter- 
ests in the Near East will be best served by sup- 
porting the Turk. He knows that England has 
millions of Mohammedan subjects who have still 
some sympathy for him on religious grounds, and 
whose susceptibilities Englishmen are naturally 
anxious to avoid hurting. He also knows that 
the British soldier is a chivalrous warrior who 
gives full credit to his adversary for any good 
qualities he may seem to possess. He under- 
stands the power of public opinion in England. 
He sees, in short, that there is in England a fer- 
tile and responsive psychological soil ready to 
nurture and fructify a hundred- fold the smallest 
show of "clean-fighting" he may make. Accord- 
ingly, the order goes forth to the Turkish soldier 
to be on his best behaviour whenever and wher- 
ever he is fighting British troops, and the Turkish 
soldier obeys with the blind obedience which is his 
chief characteristic. 



48 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

That is the true explanation of the amazing 
fact that so many — though not all — British offi- 
cers and soldiers have written or spoken of the 
Turk as a clean-fighter. It is well-known that 
some wounded Australians who had the misfor- 
tune of falling into the hands of the Turks were 
most brutally mutilated in the early part of the 
Dardanelles campaign. A wounded and gallant 
young New Zealander told me at a Hampstead 
hospital that the Turks "put three bullets into 
him," while he was being carried to the rear of the 
fighting line on a stretcher. (In case my re- 
marks concerning the clean-fighting qualities of 
the Turk should be misconstrued or misrepre- 
sented as in any way implying a doubt as to the 
evidence of British officers and soldiers, I wish to 
say emphatically, what hardly needs affirmation, 
that I regard such evidence as absolutely above 
doubt or question.) 

The Russians said in one of their official com- 
muniques that a number of their wounded had 
been mutilated by the Turks. 

Two Russian hospital ships have been delib- 
erately torpedoed by submarines manned by 
Turks and flying the Turkish flag. 

I do not of course suggest that there are no 
really clean-fighting men among the Turks. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 49 

There must be many such. It should be borne 
in mind in this connection that, in the early stages 
of the war, the Turkish army contained a con- 
siderable sprinkling of Christians — Greeks, Ar- 
menians, Syrians, etc. But to label the Turks 
as such and as a whole as clean fighters and gentle 
folk is to admit the success of the most subtle 
propagandist make-believe of the war and the 
biggest hoax ever played off by Oriental cunning 
upon a chivalrous and unsuspecting adversary. 

Armenians have known the Turk for centu- 
ries. They have known him as he is, not as he 
affects to be in the presence of a European, and 
they can claim credit for some knowledge of the 
subject. I venture to predict that there is severe 
disillusionment in store for those who still beheve 
in the genuineness of Turkish "clean-fighting" 
and "chivalry," when the British prisoners in 
Turkey return. Strange indeed must be this 
Turkish conception of chivalry to sanction the 
enslavement and slaughter of women and chil- 
dren in hundreds of thousands, instead of pro- 
tecting them and their honour as the ordinary 
code of chivalry demands. 

A Renter telegram from Cairo published in 
The Daily Chronicle of February 13, 1917, con- 
tained the following — 



50 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

"It is learnt on reliable authority that the 
British, French, and Russian prisoners who are 
employed on the construction of the new line are 
treated most roughly by the Germans and Turks, 
and that a large number are falling ill from 
dysentery and filling the military hospitals at 
Aleppo. Those who have not been attacked by 
dysentery have fallen victims to other diseases, 
resulting from bad food, rough treatment, and 
overwork. 

"One of the tricks adopted by the Germans 
and Turks, in order to throw dust in the eyes of 
the British regarding the treatment of prisoners, 
was the honour paid to General Townshend, who 
was returned his sword and accorded the best 
treatment possible. They brought him to Con- 
stantinople, and made him write a letter of 
thanks for the good treatment he and his men 
had received at the hands of the Turks. 

"General Townshend did not know at the time 
he wrote this letter what misery and hardship 
were awaiting his unhappy troops." 

I may here quote in support of my contention 
one of the foremost living European authorities 
on Near Eastern affairs, and one who certainly 
will not be suspected of anti-Turkish prejudices 
— I mean Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, M.P. Ad^ 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 51 

dressing a meeting at Kew on January 17, 1917 
(I quote from The Near East of January 19, 
1917), Sir Mark said— 

"The Turk, who in the last ten years had 
thrown back to the primitive Turanian Con- 
queror, was not content with dominating, but was 
now engaged in exterminating the Armenian, the 
Syrian Christian, and the Arabs, and was even 
now beginning to bully the Jews. The Turk 
had overthrown Islam as Prussia had overthrown 
Christianity. Prussia had replaced God by Thor 
and the Cross by his hammer. The Turk had 
replaced Mohammed by Oghuz and Allah by the 
'White Wolf of the primitive Turks. No belief 
was to be placed in that cloak of chivalry under 
which in exceptional cases the Turk tried to hide 
his abominable acts.^ He might treat General 

^ In reply to a question by Colonel Yate in the House of 
Commons on February 12, 1917: "Mr. Hope said re- 
peated representation had been made to the Turkish Gov- 
ernment to allow U. S. representatives to visit the camps, 
but up to now without success. Efforts, however, would be 
continued. Information had reached the Government that 
the conditions under which officers were interned were 
fairly satisfactory, but the condition of other prisoners 
was deplorable." — Evening Standard. 

Truth says, in its issue of February 21, 1917: "I have 
in my possession a letter written last autumn by a British 
Army officer, one of the defenders of Kut, who was then 
at a place called Vozga, l60 miles from Tigris Valley 



52 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Townshend well; but how was he treating the 
thousands of Indians and Englishmen in his 
hands? If it were possible that the Teuton- 
Turanian federation of violence could win this 
war it would be twenty generations before man- 
kind regained its liberty." 

railhead. The unfortunate prisoner complains bitterly of 
the privations which he and others have to endure at the 
hands of the Turks." 



IV 



ANGLO-RUSSIAN FRIENDSHIP A VITAL NECESSITY FOR 
PEACE AND PROGRESS IN ASIA MOSLEMS AND TURK- 
ISH RULE ARMENIANS PROGRESSIVE AND DEMO- 
CRATIC BY TEMPERAMENT 

THE exaggerated panegyrics on the virtues 
of the Turk, while the Turk is at war with 
England and her Allies and Turkish emissaries 
are busy making all the mischief they can among 
loyal subjects of the British Empire, exploiting 
religion as a weapon of squalid intrigue, point 
to the existence of influences which have been at 
work ever since Turkey joined the war, to screen 
from public view and to palliate the enormity of 
Turkish perfidy in making common cause with 
England's enemies in the hour of England's diffi- 
culty. These same influences seem to regard with 
disfavour the growth of Anglo-Russian friend- 
ship and would apparently not be sorry to see 
some hitch or other occur that would weaken or 
endanger the permanence of that friendship. 

This may be an unfounded assumption, and I 
hope it is. But if these pro-Turkish and anti- 

53 



54 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Russian influences exist in fact, and gain enough 
strength to exercise any influence on the course 
of events after the war, it will be a calamity for 
the smaller nations of the Near and Middle East, 
and in fact for all Asia. It will be a hindrance 
and a deterrent to the tranquillity and develop- 
ment that has been so long denied to these re- 
gions. Close and cordial friendship between 
England and Russia are almost as indispensable 
a condition of hfe and growth and progress to 
these backward countries as light and heat. It is 
scarcely for me to say that it is also necessary for 
the future peace of Asia and the world. The un- 
natural and unfounded mutual distrust that shad- 
owed Anglo-Russian relations throughout almost 
the whole of the past century has been chiefly 
responsible for the woes and miseries of the peo- 
ples of the Near East, Moslems as well as Chris- 
tians. It has kept back the clock of progress and 
civilization for at least fifty years. We have felt 
its effect in our daily lives and regard any pros- 
pect of its return with the utmost apprehension 
and regret. Pan-Turanian intrigues under the 
cloak of Pan-Islamism will not end with the war. 
They will be continued after the war by their pro- 
tagonists, whose chief concern is, not the interests 
of the Mohammedan religion, but the unscrupu- 
lous exploitation of religious sentiment for per- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 55 

sonal ends, and the disturbance of the tranquillity 
and ordered government which in the present 
chaotic state of these countries are only possible 
under the strong and just arm of British, Rus- 
sian, or French protection. Any weakening in 
Anglo-Russian friendship would give these in- 
triguers their chance, of which they would not 
be slow to take the fullest advantage, with in- 
jurious consequences to the countries concerned 
and to the general interests of peace. The best 
elements of Islam, and especially the peasant 
populations which form the vast majority of the 
Moslem world, know and have proved by their 
loyalty that they have nothing to fear from Brit- 
ain, Russia and France, who have always not 
only respected, but fostered their religious inter- 
ests and given them, in addition, the inestimable 
blessings of freedom, justice, security and pros- 
perity such as they could never expect to enjoy 
under any other regime. 

It is idle to pretend that any subject race loves 
any form of domination for its own sake. But 
many races and countries in Asia and Africa are 
so situated that independence is beyond the 
bounds of practicability. Any change would 
result in an exchange of one domination for 
another. Some forms of domination are sin- 
cerely welcomed because, as against the evil of 



56 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

domination, they have not only conferred upon 
the peoples under their rule benefits and blessings 
which they themselves could not possibly have 
achieved, but have allowed them freedom of de- 
velopment on their national lines. Such in vary- 
ing degrees is the nature of British, French, 
Russian, and, I may add, Dutch dominion over 
the alien races under their rule. What has 
Turkish domination been to its subject races? 
An unmitigated curse to Christian, Moslem and 
Jew alike, with this difference, that while the 
Moslem and Jew have been reduced by merciless 
taxation and robbery to extreme poverty, the 
Christian races have been bled almost to death. 
The Turks have deliberately fostered the crim- 
inal propensities of large sections of their people 
and encouraged their free indulgence to check 
the growth and progress of the moral and civiliz- 
ing elements in their dominions. If some of the 
Moslems of India, Egypt or Tunis, whose sym- 
pathy with the Turks on religious grounds every 
one will understand and respect, would live under 
Turkish rule for a few months, I have no doubt 
they would be completely cured of their love for 
the Turk as such, hasten back to their homes and 
beg the British and the French to remain in their 
countries for ever. Similarly, if it were possible 
for the most rabid pro-Turks in this or any Euro- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 57 

pean country to live some time under the Turk, 
disguised as Armenians or Syrians, they would 
also be cured and more than cured of their ad- 
miration for the Turk; then only would they 
come to understand his real nature. 

The following account of the experiences of 
some Indian pilgrims at Kerbela at the outbreak 
of war, which appeared in The Times of June 6, 
1916, bears out my contention — 

''The Bombay Government have published the 
story of an Indian Moslem pilgrim, Zakir Hu- 
sain, who recently escaped from Kerbela (Bagh- 
dad Vilayet), whither he went on pilgrimage 
with his mother and sister in the summer of 1914. 

"Zakir Husain states that after the outbreak 
of war all routes homewards were blocked, and 
the many Indian pilgrims at Kerbela were sub- 
jected to the utmost discomfort and cruelty. 
The Turkish authorities issued orders that the 
goods and women of Indians were the legal prop- 
erty of those who plundered them. Their houses 
were searched, their goods taken, and dozens of 
Indians were arrested and deported to the Alep- 
po side, while their families and children were left 
in Kerbela. 

"Throughout these fourteen months," he con- 
tinued, "we never got meals more than once a 



58 AKMENIA AND THE WAR 

day. We could not get any work, and conse- 
quently we had to beg from door to door in order 
to get a few scraps of bread to eat, and the state 
of the women and children was worse even than 
that of the men. For a man to be an Indian was 
considered a sufficient reason by Turks to torture 
and imprison him. We protested that we were 
Moslems, but they never paid heed. They them- 
selves are no Moslems, and do not act according 
to the precepts of Islam. According to what I 
heard, the Indians in Nejef, Kazimain, and 
Baghdad have also been treated in the same cruel 
way as we were; hundreds have been deported 
and their houses pillaged." 

The following from The Times of December 
26, 1916, is another illustration of the way Turks 
treat Moslems of another race who refuse to be- 
come the blind slaves of their political madness — ■ 

"Emir Faisal, commander of the Arabian 
forces in the vicinity of Medina, has telegraphed 
to Mecca stating that the Turks have hanged and 
crucified and employed every species of barbarity 
against the population of Medina." 

Turn now from that picture to the following 
appeal made to Armenians by one of their princi- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 69 

pal Tiflis daily papers, Mschak (Labourer), of 
May 16, 1915— 

"To-day the Moslem Benevolent Society is 
organizing a collection for building and main- 
taining a shelter for the children of the (Moslem) 
refugees. War causes suffering to the popula- 
tion of the country without distinction of race or 
creed. Moslems as well as Christians have to 
face the effects of the war, therefore the scheme 
of the Moslem Benevolent Society to estabUsh a 
shelter for the children of Moslem refugees is 
deserving of all sympathy and support. We are 
convinced that the Armenian community also, 
having in mind the universal idea of humanity, 
will take part in the collection and do their duty 
as a humane people and good neighbours." 

These incidents, small in themselves, bring into 
strong relief the difference between the mentality 
and degree of civilization of the two races. The 
Armenian appeal on behalf of refugee Moslem 
children at a time when one half of their own race 
was in the throes of the most ferocious of the 
numerous attacks made upon its existence, is 
also incidentally a reply, more trenchant than the 
most eloquent argument in words, to those pro- 
Turks who have from time to time expressed 



60 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

fears for the rights of the Turks, Kurds, Tcher- 
kesses, Kizilbashis, etc., in an autonomous Ar- 
menia. Such a fear is either due to ignorance of 
the characteristics of the races concerned, or to 
prejudice. It is inconceivable that any Armenian 
Government would tolerate, much less impose 
upon orderly and good citizens, an injustice 
which Armenians have themselves endured and 
struggled against for generations, and which is, 
for that reason, abhorrent to their very nature. 
A study of the Armenian Church organization 
will prove to the most sceptical that the Armenian 
temperament is essentially democratic. In the 
smallest village the candidate for priesthood must 
be elected by a vote of the inhabitants before he 
can be ordained by the bishop of the diocese. 
The Armenian deputies in the Russian State 
Duma as well as the late members of the Otto- 
man Parliament are and were supporters of the 
Progressives. Armenians who have risen to posi- 
tions of influence in the service of foreign coun- 
tries have invariably used their influence in the 
cause of progress. General Loris MelikofF as 
Minister of the Interior had actually prepared a 
scheme for the reform of the Government of 
Russia when his Imperial Master, the Czar Alex- 
ander II, died, and the scheme was shelved. 
Nubar Pasha, the famous Egyptian- Armenian 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 61 

statesman, for many years Prime Minister, was 
largely responsible for the abolition of the corvee 
in Egypt, and the introduction of many other 
reforms. The writer of Nubar Pasha's biog- 
raphy in the Encyclopcedia Britannica, referring 
to his substitution of Mixed Courts in place of 
the "Capitulations," says (Eleventh Ed., Vol. 
19, p. 843), "That in spite of the jealousies of 
all the Powers, in spite of the opposition of the 
Porte, he should have succeeded, places him at 
once in the first rank of statesmen of his period." 
Prince Malcolm Khan, for some years Persian 
Minister in London, sowed the first seeds of con- 
stitutional government in Persia, for the defence 
of which another Armenian, Yeprem Khan, laid 
down his life while leading the constitutional 
struggle against Mohamed Ali Shah. The first 
constitution of the Ottoman Empire, known as 
the Midhat Constitution, was largely the work of 
Midhat Pasha's Armenian Under-Secretary, 
Odian EfFendi. These are but a few outstand- 
ing instances. It must appear inconceivable to 
right-minded men that a race with such a past 
record, achieved under all sorts of handicaps, will 
either establish a regime of tyranny over other 
races or prove incapable of self-government after 
a transition period under European advisers, as 
is alleged by some. 



V 



ARMENIA AS A PEACE PROBLEM VIEWS OF THE "MAN- 
CHESTER guardian" AND THE "sPECTATOr" CAN 

ARMENIANS STAND ALONE AMONG THE KURDS? 

AMERICAN OPINION AND THE FUTURE OF ARMENIA 



ALTHOUGH the Allies have declared in 
their reply to President Wilson that one of 
their aims is "the liberation of the peoples who 
now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the 
Turks," no official or authoritative statement has 
yet been made by the Allied Governments as re- 
gards the precise future status of Armenia. Mr. 
Asquith in his Guildhall speech spoke of "repara- 
tion and redemption." M. Briand in a letter to 
M. Louis Martin, Senator of the Var, published 
in the Courier du Parlement (Paris) of Novem- 
ber 12, 1916, says: "When the hour for legitimate 
reparation shall have struck, France will not for- 
get the terrible trials of the Armenians, and, in 
accord with her Allies, she will take the necessary 
measures to ensure for Armenia a life of peace 
and progress." M. Anatole France, in his speech 
at the great "Homage a I'Armenie" meeting in 
the Sorbonne in April 1916, used these words: 

62 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 63 

"L'Armenie expire, mais elle renaitra. Le peu 
de sang qui lui reste est un sang precieux dont 
sortira une posterite heroique. Un peuple qui ne 
veut pas mourir ne meurt pas. Apres la victoire 
de nos armees, qui combattent pour la liberte, les 
Allies auront de grands devoirs a remplir. Et 
le plus sacre de ces devoirs sera de rendre la vie 
aux peuples martyrs, a la Belgique, a la Serbie. 
Alors ils assureront la surete et I'independance 
de TArmenie. Penches sur elle, ils lui diront: 
'Ma soeur, leve toi ! ne souff re plus. Tu es desor- 
mais libre de vivre selon ton genie et foil' "^ 

M. Paul Deschanel, the President of the 
French Senate, and M. Painleve, Minister of 
Public Instruction, spoke in more or less similar 
terms. 

The most recent authoritative reference to Ar- 
menia — and one which is of special importance, 
coming as it does from a member of the Inner 

^ "Armenia is dying, but she will be born again — the 
little blood that is left to her is the precious blood from 
which will arise a heroic posterity. A people that refuses 
to die will not die. After the victory of our armies, which 
are fighting for justice and liberty, the Allies will have 
great duties to fulfil. And the most sacred of these duties 
will be to bring back to life the martyred peoples, Belgium 
and Serbia. Then they will assure the security and inde- 
pendence of Armenia. Bending over her they will say to 
her: 'Rise, sister! suffer no more. Henceforth you are 
free to live according to your genius and your faith !' " 



64 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Cabinet or War Council — is Mr. Arthur Hen- 
derson's statement in his conversation with the 
correspondent of the New York Tribune, re- 
ported in The Times of January 8, 1916, as fol- 
lows: "Speaking of the part of Turkey in the 
war, Mr. Henderson said that though Armenian 
atrocities were not much talked about here, they 
had undoubtedly made a deep impression on 
the minds of the working population, who, he 
thought, were determined that never again should 
a Christian nation be under the yoke of the 
Turk." These are comforting words indeed to 
Armenians, as were those of Mr. Asquith at the 
Guildhall. Nothing could give the Armenian 
people more comfort and hope for the future 
than this assurance of the British working man's 
sympathy — of which they never had any doubt — 
and his determination to see them freed from the 
Turkish yoke once and for all. 

But here again Mr. Henderson — no doubt for 
very good reasons — gave no intimation of the 
intentions of the British or Allied Governments 
concerning the new status of Armenia after its 
liberation from the Turkish yoke. 

It has been suggested that American opinion 
would favour annexation by Russia as a means 
of putting an end to Turkish atrocities and mis- 
government of Armenia. This reading of Amer- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 65 

ican opinion is not supported by President Wil- 
son's statement in his historic speech to the Senate 
that "no right anywhere exists to hand peoples 
from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were 
property." All the Allied countries, and prob- 
ably all neutrals, are determined to see the end 
of the Turkish reign of terror in Armenia. But 
annexation by Russia or any other Great Power, 
before the blood is dry of hundreds of thousands 
of Armenians sacrificed for their faith and pas- 
sionate adherence to their ideal of nationality, 
must seem particularly unjust to all fair-minded 
men in all countries, especially the great Ameri- 
can democracy, who themselves put an end to 
misgovernment of a much milder kind in Cuba, 
but did not annex it. Indeed, having herself, 
jointly with her Allies, solemnly laid down the 
"recognition of the principle of nationalities" as 
one of the terms of peace stated in the Allied 
Note to President Wilson, it seems unthinkable 
that Russia, on her part, would entertain the in- 
tention of annealing, and especially of annexing 
a country and people who have paid a terrible 
price largely on account of their sympathy with 
and support of the Allied cause, and rendered 
services the value of which Russia herself has 
generously recognized. 

It is argued in some quarters that the Arme- 



66 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

nian highlands are a strategic necessity to Russiao 
There is a "scrap of paper" ring in such an argu- 
ment, and I for one cannot beheve that the 
justice-loving Russian people would allow such 
considerations to override a solemn pledge and 
the principle of common justice. An Allied pro- 
tectorate with Russia acting as their mandatory 
would place these strategically important regions 
under practically as effective a Russian control 
as outright annexation, while it would have the 
additional advantages of giving real effect to the 
* recognition of the principle of nationalities,'* 
and avoiding injustice, injury and affront to 
the national sentiment of a people which has en- 
dured such grievous sufferings and sacrifices to 
uphold that sentiment. 

As I write, two important references to the 
future of Armenia have appeared in the Press. 
One in the Manchester Guardian — that old and 
constant champion of wronged and suffering 
humanity — quoted by The Times of December 
30, 1916, as follows: ^'Another word remains — 
Armenia — a word of ghastly horror, carrying the 
memory of deeds not done in the world since 
Christ was born — a country swept clear by the 
wholesale murder of its people. To Turkey that 
country must never and under no circumstances 
go back. . . ." 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 67 

The other reference is made by the Spectator 
in its issue of December 30, in a leading article 
entitled "The Allied Terms." It says— 

"The process of freeing nationalities from op- 
pression must be applied organically to the 
Turkish Empire. The Armenians, or what re- 
mains of the race, whose agonized calls for help 
and mercy have been heard even through the din 
of the present war, will probably have to be 
placed under the tutelage of Russia. They could 
not stand alone among the Kurds." 

If by "Russian tutelage" the Spectator 
means the setting up of a self-governing Ar- 
menia under Russian Suzerainty, that would 
amount, in my opinion, to the approximate 
realization of the hopes and aspirations of the 
Armenian people, provided that by "Armenia" 
is understood the six vilayets and Cilicia; pro- 
vided also that Great Britain and France re- 
tained the rights of Protecting Powers as in the 
case of Greece. Anything short of this, any par- 
celling out of Armenia, either by annexation or 
"tutelage" of different parts under different 
Powers, would not only be irreconcilable with the 
"recognition of the principle of nationalities" 
which the Allies have solemnly declared to be one 



68 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

of their principal aims and terms of peace; it 
would imply an outrage upon the ideal of nation- 
ality which is the ruling passion of Armenians 
everywhere. Lynch, the great Armenian author- 
ity, has called the Armenians "the strongest na- 
tionalists in the world." This ideal of nationality 
has grown stronger, more alive and resolute than 
ever by their services and unimaginable suffer- 
ings and sacrifices in the war. "The httle blood 
that is left them" has become doubly and trebly 
precious to the survivors. They rightly feel that 
they have established, and more than established, 
their title to autonomy and a strong claim upon 
the whole-hearted support of the Allied Powers 
to enable them to stand on their feet again and 
make a fair start on the road to nationhood. 
If Armenia is cut up and parcelled out without 
regard for this fervent living sentiment of Ar- 
menian nationalism, and their high hopes and 
expectations are dashed to the ground, it will 
conceivably engender in all Armenians a deep 
sense of wrong and injustice, an intense discon- 
tent with the new order of things, that are not 
likely to conduce to that contentment and that 
smoothness of relations between the governors 
and the governed that are the essentials and the 
fundamental preliminary steps towards setting 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 69 

these much-troubled regions on the road towards 
good government, progress and civilization. 

The "principle of nationalities" and of "gov- 
ernment by the consent of the governed" will be 
applied all along the line : Belgium, Alsace-Lor- 
raine, Serbia, Poland, Bohemia, Transylvania, 
Arabia, Syria, Palestine, will have restored to 
them or will be granted the forms of govern- 
ment most acceptable to the peoples concerned. 
These true and righteous principles, which 
will herald the dawn of universal justice and 
morality in the treatment of their weaker breth- 
ren by the Great Powers of Europe, will cease 
to operate only when Armenia comes to be 
dealt with. Armenia alone, who has suffered the 
most tragic, the most grievous and heartrending 
Calvary, shall be denied an Easter. Why? Be- 
cause the Armenian people have lost too much 
blood; because they have paid too high a price 
for their fidelity to their faith, the preservation 
of their distinctive national life and their strong 
support of the Allied cause. That would be an 
unspeakably cruel and bitter climax to the un- 
ending nightmare of Turkish tyranny, the Great 
Tragedy and martyrdom of the Armenian peo- 
ple. It will be nothing less than a confirmation 
of the death sentence passed by Abdul Hamid 



70 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

and the Young Turks on the ideal of Armenian 
nationality. 

Let those who speak lightly of anneooation by 
Russia put themselves in the place of the tens of 
thousands of Armenians who have lost wife and 
children, sons, brothers, fathers, near or distant 
relatives, both in massacre as well as in what they 
understood to be a sacred struggle for liberty, to 
say nothing of their complete economic ruin. 
They would be much more or much less than 
human if they did not feel a deep and smarting 
sense of wrong at seeing all their appalling sacri- 
fices and important services result in a mere ex- 
change of the Kaimakam for the Chinovnik. It 
is far indeed from my purpose to put the two 
types of official and the respective systems of 
government they represent on the same level. 
They differ as day from night. In my opinion 
and to my knowledge the vast majority of Ar- 
menians will welcome Russian suzerainty with 
sincere satisfaction. But, after the ordeal of 
blood and fire through which they have passed, 
they must feel, as I believe they do feel with 
ample justification, that they have a right to a 
voice and a liberal measure of participation in the 
government of their own country. 

I cannot do better than quote here a passage 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 71 

from Mr. Gladstone's great speech on the Treaty 
of Berhn, which is apphcable to Armenia, and 
than which there could be no wiser, more just or 
authoritative guidance for the formation of a 
sound and just view on the Armenian and kin- 
dred problems — 

"My meaning. Sir, was that, for one, I utterly 
repelled the doctrine that the power of Turkey 
is to be dragged to the ground for the purpose 
of handing over the Dominion that Turkey now 
exercises to some other great State, be that State 
either Russia or Austria or even England. In 
my opinion such a view is utterly false, and even 
ruinous, and has been the source of the main diffi- 
culties in which the Government have been in- 
volved, and in which they have involved the coun- 
try. I hold that those provinces of the Turkish 
Empire, which have been so cruelly and unjustly 
ruled, ought to be regarded as existing, not for 
the sake of any other Power whatever, but for 
the sake of the populations by whom they are in- 
habited. The object of our desire ought to be 
the development of those populations on their 
own soil, as its proper masters, and as the persons 
with a view to whose welfare its destination ought 
to be determined." 



72 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

It may be argued that things have changed 
since 1878. The answer to that is that principles 
are immutable. The only change is the cruel 
reduction of the Armenian population. I ask, 
first of all: "Is it fair and right and just that we 
should suffer massacre and persecution for gen- 
erations, and when the time for reparation comes, 
should be penalized because so many of us have 
been massacred?" Secondly, it should not be 
forgotten that although the Armenian element 
of the population has been reduced, the Turks 
and Kurds have also suffered very considerable 
losses. Thirdly, the Armenians are much more 
advanced intellectually to-day than they were 
forty years ago, while their neighbours — Turks, 
Kurds, and others — are stagnating in the same 
primitive state as they were forty — or, for that 
matter, four hundred — years ago. Another cir- 
cumstance which adds materially to the chances 
of success of an autonomous Armenia is the ex- 
istence of a number of flourishing Armenian com- 
munities of various sizes in other countries — in 
the Russian Caucasus and the Russian Empire, 
Persia, the United States, Egypt, the Balkans, 
France, Great Britain, India, Java, etc. — which 
are at the present time looking forward with en- 
thusiasm and readiness for sacrifice, to "do their 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 73 

bit" in the sacred work of the reconstruction of 
their stricken and beloved IMotherland. 

Coming to the Spectator's contention that 
"they (the Armenians) could not stand alone 
against the Kurds," I can assure the Spectator 
that there is no cause whatever for apprehension 
on that score, if only the Russian Government 
and Army authorities will agree to allow the Ar- 
menians to organize under their guidance and 
supervision, immediately after the war, a number 
of flying columns from among discharged Arme- 
nian volunteers and soldiers in the regular army, 
for the specific purpose of carrying out a "drive" 
from one end of the country to the other and dis- 
arming the Kurds. The Armenian volunteers, 
of whom I speak in another chapter, have had a 
good deal of fighting to do with the Kurds during 
the war and have proved more than their match, 
in many cases against superior numbers. 

The prevailing erroneous belief that the Ar- 
menians "could not stand alone among the 
Kurds" has its origin in the fact that for centuries 
(up to 1908) Armenians have been an easy prey 
to the Kurds by reason of their being prohibited 
to possess or carry arms on pain of death, while 
the Kurds were supplied with arms from the 
government arsenals, and encouraged and sup- 
ported in every way by the central government 



74 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

to harass the Armenians. What chance would 
the bravest people in the world have under such 
circumstances? Since 1908, when the prohibition 
of carrying arms by Christians was relaxed, it is 
a well-known fact, attested by European travel- 
lers, that Kurds never attacked Armenian vil- 
lages which they knew to be armed. Zeytoon and 
Sassoon have demonstrated beyond question that 
when Armenians have met Turks on anything 
like equal terms, they have proved their match. 
These isolated, compact communities of fearless 
mountaineers were never entirely subjugated by 
the Turks until the outbreak of the present war, 
when the Zeytoonlis were overwhelmed by Turk- 
ish treachery and the Sassoonlis died fighting to 
the last man and woman {see Blue-book, pp. 84 
and 87). 

In 1905 the Tartars, who are nearly twice as 
numerous as the Armenians in the Caucasus, 
made a sudden attack upon the latter in the 
Hamidian style. But thanks to the equity of 
Russian government, Armenians in the Caucasus 
were as free to carry arms as Tartars, so the Tar- 
tars soon regained their "humane sentiments" 
and offered peace to stop further bloodshed. I 
would recommend those who entertain any fears 
of Armenians being able to defend themselves 
against Kurds or Tartars to read Villari's Fire 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 75 

and Sword in the Caucasus and Moore's The 
Orient Express, 

At all events Europe will not be taking any 
risk in giving the Armenians the opportunity of 
proving that they can "make good" in spite of 
the Kurds, and also, as we hope, can gradually 
civilize the Kurds and other neighbouring back- 
ward races/ 

As far as I know (in fact I have no doubt 
about it), Armenians are prepared to take the 
risk of "standing alone among the Kurds, pro- 
vided that the Entente Powers afford them the 
necessary assistance during the first few years 
of reconstruction and initiation, and above all, 
provided that they enjoy the whole-hearted and 
benevolent good-will of Russia, for which, it is 
as certain as anything human can be, their great 
protector and neighbour will reap a rich harvest 
in the future — as rich a harvest as that which 
Britain is reaping to-day for her act of justice 
and statesmanship in South Africa. 

^ Armenians have from time to time opened schools for 
Kurdish children^ but their efforts were not successful, 
mainly owing to the unfriendly attitude of the Turkish 
authorities. 



VI 



Armenia's services in the war 



HAVE spoken earlier in these pages of the 
services of the Armenians to the AlHed cause 
in the war. What are these services ? 

The Armenian name has been so long and so 
often associated with massacre that it has given 
rise to the general but utterly unfounded belief 
by those who have not gone deeper into the mat- 
ter, that Armenians are devoid of physical cour- 
age and allow themselves to be butchered like 
sheep/ Where this belief is not based upon ig- 

^ Pierre Loti, the well-known French writer, who was an 
ardent Turkophile before the war, after adding his quota 
to the current, and, one is constrained to say, cheap, com- 
ments on the lack of courage and numberless other failings 
of the Armenians, adds the following P.S. in his Turquie 
Agonisante (pp. 94-95) after a longer sojourn in the 
country and closer contact with realities. (I give the 
translation from the French.) — 

"Before concluding I desire to make honourable, sincere 
and spontaneous amends to the Armenians, at least as 
regards their attitude in the ranks of the Ottoman Army. 
This is certainly not due to the protestations which they 
have inserted in the Constantinople Press by the power of 
gold." [This is a curious admission by Pierre Loti; one 
of the stock cries of the Turkophiles is that the Turk is 

76 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 77 

norance of the facts and circumstances, it is, I 
am bound to say, a particularly dastardly piece 
of calumny upon a people who have groaned for 
centuries under a brutal tyrant's heel, with an 
indomitable spirit that has ever been and is even 
to-day the Turk's despair. The struggle that 
has gone on for five or six centuries between Ar- 
menian and Turk symbolizes, perhaps better than 
any event in history, the invincibility of the spirit 
of Christianity and liberty and the ideal of na- 
tionaHty against overwhelming odds of ruthless 
tyranny, the savagery of the Dark Ages and the 
unscrupulous and mendacious exploitation of 

above "bakshish."] "No^ I have many friends among 
Turkish officers; I have learned from them, and there can 
be no doubt, that my earlier information vras exaggerated, 
and th^t, notwithstanding a good number of previous de- 
sertions, the Armenians placed under their orders con- 
ducted themselves with courage. Therefore, I am happy 
to be able to withdraw without arriere pensee what I have 
said on this subject, and I apologize." 

Of all British games and sports Armenians in different 
parts of the British Empire, the Dutch Colonies and 
Persia have manifested a natural predilection for Rugby 
Football, in which physical courage comes into play more 
than in most other games. In recent years the Armenian 
College of Calcutta won the Calcutta Schools' Cup three 
years in succession, which gave it the right to retain the 
trophy. I am glad to see in the March issue of Ararat 
that the Boy Scouts of the same college, under Scoutmaster 
Dr. G. D. Hope, have won the King's Flag, presented by 
His Majesty to the troop having the largest number of 
King's Scouts in India and Burmah. 



78 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

religious passion. That struggle has been as un- 
equal as can well be imagined, but we have not 
permitted the forces of darkness to triumph over 
the spirit of Light and Liberty, though the price 
paid has come very near that of our annihilation. 
Nevertheless, we have been able, in this world- 
wide struggle, not dissimilar to our own long 
struggle in the moral issues involved, to render 
services to the cause of the Allies, which is the 
cause of Right and Justice, and therefore our 
cause also, quite out of proportion, in their effect, 
to our numbers as a race or our contribution of 
fighting men as compared with the vast armies 
engaged, although that contribution has been by 
no means negligible. 

On the eve of Turkey's entry into the war the 
Young Turks employed every conceivable means 
— persuasion, cajolery, intimidation, the promise 
of a large autonomous Armenia, etc. — to induce 
the Armenian party leaders to prevail upon the 
Russian Armenians to join themselves in a mass 
rally to the Turkish flag against Russia. They 
sent a number of emissaries to Russian Armenia 
with the same object. The Turk must have a 
peculiar understanding of human nature, and not 
much sense of humour, to have the naivete to 
make such overtures to Armenians after having 
persecuted and harried and massacred them for 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 79 

centuries. All the Armenian leaders promised 
was a correct attitude as Ottoman subjects. They 
would do neither more nor less than what they 
were bound to do by the laws of the country. 
They could not interfere with the freedom of 
action of their compatriots in the Caucasus who 
owed allegiance to Russia. They kept their 
promise scrupulously in the first months of the 
war. Armenian conscripts went to the depots 
without enthusiasm. How could it be otherwise? 
What claim had the Turks upon the sympathy 
and support of their Armenian subjects? Is 
sympathy won by tyranny, or loyalty bred by 
massacre? They (the Armenians) were placed in 
a most difficult position. They were naturally 
reluctant to fight against the Russians, and the 
position was aggravated by the fact that the 
Russian Caucasian army was largely composed 
of Russian Ai^menians. But in spite of these 
sentimental difficulties, mobilization w^as com- 
pleted without any serious trouble. 

Soon, however, Armenians began to desert in 
large numbers; the Young Turks had joined the 
war against their wish and advice; they had not 
their heart in the business, and, last, but not least, 
they were harried, ill-treated and insulted by their 
Turkish officers and comrades at every turn: 
there were exceptions, of course, but that was 



80 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the position generally in the closing months of 
1914. Let me add that there were large numbers 
of Turkish deserters also, and that the Armenian 
leaders did all they could to send the deserters of 
their own nationality back to the ranks, doing so 
forcibly in some cases. Then came the defeat of 
the Turks at Sarikamysh and the ejection of 
D j evdet Bey and his force from Azerbai j an. On 
his return to Van, Dj evdet Bey told his friends: 
"It is the Armenians much more than the Rus- 
sians who are fighting us." 

The massacres and deportations began soon 
after the collapse of the Turkish invasion of the 
Caucasus and Northern Persia, and it is only 
after it was seen clearly that the Turks were de- 
termined to deport or destroy them all that the 
Armenians in many places took up arms in self- 
defence. There was no armed resistance before 
that, and the Turkish and German allegations 
of an Armenian revolt are a barefaced invention 
to justify a crime, a tithe of which not one but a 
hundred revolts cannot justify or palliate. This 
is proved beyond all question by Mr. Toynbee's 
concise and illuminating historical summary at 
the end of the Blue-book on the Treatment of 
Armenians by the Turks during the war. There 
was no revolt. But when the Armenians were 
driven to self-defence under the menace of exter- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 81 

mination, they fought with what arms they could 
scrape together, with the courage of desperation. 
In Shahin-Karahissar they held out for three 
months and were only reduced by artillery 
brought from Erzerum. In Van and Jebel- 
Mousa they defended themselves against heavy 
odds until relieved by the Russians and the Ar- 
menian volunteers in the first case, and rescued 
by French and British cruisers in the second. The 
Turkish force sent against the insurgents of 
Jebel-Mousa was detached from the army in- 
tended for the attack on the Suez Canal. 

Of course ill-armed, poorly equipped bands 
without artillery, wanting in almost all neces- 
saries of modern warfare, brave as they may be, 
cannot possibly maintain a prolonged resistance 
against superior forces of regulars well supplied 
with artillery, machine-guns and all that is needed 
in war. Nevertheless, some of these bands seem 
to have succeeded in holding out for many 
months, and it is believed in the Caucasus that 
there are groups of armed Armenians still hold- 
ing out in some parts of the higher mountains 
behind the Turkish lines."^ It will be remembered 

^ I may here point out that — though it is stated in the 
admirable historical summary in the Blue-book (p. 649) 
that "the number of those who have emerged from hiding 
since the Russian occupation is extraordinarily small" — 
this number has been growing very considerably of late. 



82 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

that some weeks ago — I do not recall the date — 
a Constantinople telegram reprinted in The 
Times from German papers stated that there 
were 30,000 armed Armenian rebels in the vilayet 
of Sivas. This is an obvious exaggeration, and 
it may simply mean that a considerable number 
of Armenians were still defending themselves 
against the menace of massacre. When the Rus- 
sian army entered Trebizond a band of some 400 
armed Armenians came down from the moun- 
tains and surrendered themselves to the Russians. 
Quite recently a band of seventy men cut through 
the Turkish lines and gained the Russian lines 
in the neighbourhood of Erzinjian. 

The Turks have repeatedly declared that the 
"Armenian revolt" threatened to place their army 
between two fires. The particle of truth that 
there is in this assertion is, as may be judged by 
the facts so far known as cited above, that the 
Armenian resistance to massacre and deportation 
proved to be more serious than they had antici- 
pated, and that they had to detach large numbers 
of troops and in some cases artillery and machine- 
guns to keep these "rebels" in check. It is con- 
sequently undeniable that Armenian armed resis- 

as may be seen from Mr. Backhouse's telegram to the 
chairman of the Armenian Refugees (Lord Mayor's) 
Fund, dated Tiflis, November 27, 1916, published in the 
newspapers. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 83 

tance to deportation and massacre has been a 
considerable hindrance to the full development 
of Turkish military power during the war and 
has, in that way, been of material, though, indi- 
rect assistance to the Allied forces operating 
against the Turks. To this may be added the 
demoralizing effect that the deplorable state of 
affairs created by the Turks in their dominions 
must have exercised on the morale of their peo- 
ple. 

Such in general outline have been the services 
of the Turkish Armenians to the Allied cause. 
It is not my purpose here to endeavour to ap- 
praise the possibly ill-concealed, but not by any 
means ostentatious or provocative, sympathy of 
the Armenians for the Allies, upon the sinister 
designs of the Young Turks. I will content 
myself with the description of a significant car- 
toon that appeared early in the war in the Turk- 
ish comic paper Karagoz in Constantinople. The 
cartoon depicted two Turks discussing the war. 
*' Where do you get your war news from?" asked 
Turk number one. "I do not need war news," 
replied Turk number two; "I can follow the 
course of the war by the expression on the faces 
of the Armenians I meet. When they are happy 
I know the Allies are winning, when depressed 
I know the Germans have had a victory." 



84 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

The following extract from a dead Turkish 
officer's notebook, reproduced in the Russhaia 
Viedomosti (No. 205), throws some light on the 
Turkish estimate of the value of Armenian sup- 
port in the war. "If our Armenians had been 
with us," wrote this Turkish officer, "we would 
have defeated the Russians long ago."^ 

The services of the Russian Armenians to the 
Allied cause, but principally, of course to the 
Russian cause during the war, have been of a 
more direct and positive character and of far- 
reaching importance. They may be divided into 
two distinct parts, namely, military and political; 
and in order the better to explain the full mean- 
ing of the Armenian "strong support of the 
Russian cause" (in the words of The Times), 
I will deal with each of the two parts separately. 

The Armenian population of Russian Armenia 
and the Caucasus numbers, roughly, 1,750,000 
souls, and there are probably another 100,000 to 
200,000 Armenians scattered over the other parts 
of the empire. They are liable to military service 
as Russian subjects, and it is estimated that they 
have given to the Russian army some 160,000 
men. Apart from this not negligible number of 

^ Compare an Armenian officer's evidence. Blue-book, p. 
231, " . . . they laid the blame for this defeat upon the 
Armenians, though he could not tell why." 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 85 

men called to the colours in the ordinary course 
of mobilization, the Armenians, as a result of an 
understanding with the authorities, organized and 
equipped at their own expense a separate auxil- 
iary volunteer force under tried and experienced 
guerilla leaders, such as Andranik, Keri and oth- 
ers, to co-operate with the Caucasian army. This 
force contained a number of Turkish Armenians, 
mostly refugees from previous massacres. Some 
twenty thousand men responded to the call for 
volunteers, though I believe not more than about 
ten thousand could be armed and sent to the 
front. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed. Ar- 
menian students at the Universities of Moscow 
and Petrograd and educational institutions in 
the Caucasus vied with each other in their eager- 
ness to take part in the fight for the liberation of 
their kinsmen from bondage. Several young 
lady students offered to enlist, but I believe all 
but two or three were dissuaded from taking part 
in actual fighting. Boys of fourteen and fifteen 
years ran away from home and tramped long 
distances to join the volunteer battalions. It is 
recorded that an Armenian widow at Kars, on 
hearing that her only son had been killed in bat- 
tle, exclaimed, "Curse me that I did not give 
birth to ten more sons to fight and die for the 
freedom of our country." 



86 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

The volunteer force was not large, but it was 
a mobile force well adapted to the semi-guerilla 
kind of warfare carried on in Armenia, and the 
men knew the country. They seem to have done 
good work as scouts in particular, though they 
took part in many severe engagements and were 
mentioned once or twice in Russian communiques 
as "our Armenian detachments." Generous ap- 
preciation of the services and gallantry of the 
volunteers as well as of Armenians in the army 
has been expressed by Russian military com- 
manders, the Press, and public men. High mili- 
tary honours were conferred upon the volunteer 
leaders, and His Imperial Majesty the Czar hon- 
oured the Armenian nation by his visit to the 
Armenian Cathedral in Tiflis, demonstrating his 
satisfaction with the part played by Armenians 
in the war.^ 

There are, of course, many Armenian high 
officers in the Russian Army, including several 
generals, but so far they have not had the oppor- 
tunity of producing in this war outstanding mil- 
itary leaders of the calibre of Loris MelikofF and 

^ In an article on "The Armenian Massacres'* in the 
April Contemporary Review, Mr. Lewis Einstein, ex-mem- 
ber of the staff of the United States Embassy in Con- 
stantinople, says: "Talaat attributed the disasters that 
befell the Turks at Sarikamish, in Azerbaijan and at Van_, 
to the Armenian volunteers." 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 87 

Terkhougasoff. General Samsonoff, "the Rus- 
sian Kitchener," was killed early in the war in 
East Prussia in his gallant and successful attempt 
to relieve the pressure on Paris. 

The political effect of the strong and enthusi- 
astic support of the Russian cause by Armenians 
has been to keep in check the discontented and 
fanatical section of the Tartars and other Mos- 
lems of the Caucasus, who would have been dis- 
posed to make common cause with the Turks 
whenever a favourable opportunity should pre- 
sent itself to do so without much risk to them- 
selves. The Tartars and other Moslem elements 
of the Caucasus are as a whole genuinely loyal 
to Russia, but the existence of a minority who 
would welcome the success of the Turkish inva- 
sion cannot be denied. Some of the Ajars did, 
in fact, join the Turks during their invasion of 
Ardahan. 

All things considered, therefore, those who 
have any knowledge of the racial and political 
conditions in the Caucasus will not, I think, re- 
gard it as in any sense an exaggeration to assert 
that the whole-hearted support of the Armenians 
— and I may also add, though in a lesser degree, 
the Georgians — has contributed very materially 
to the success of Russian arms in the Caucasian 
theatre of the war. The absence of that support. 



88 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

or even mere formal or lukewarm support, would 
not only most probably have had serious conse- 
quences for the Caucasus, it would have left the 
whole of Persia at the mercy of the Turks ; and 
who can say what the consequences of such a 
catastrophe would have been on Arabia, Meso- 
potamia, Afghanistan and even the northern 
frontiers of India itself? 

Nearly all the able-bodied Armenians in 
France, between 1000 and 1500 strong, joined 
the French Foreign Legion quite early in the 
war. Some Armenians came from the United 
States to fight for France. Only some 250 have 
survived, I understand, most of whom are proud 
possessors of the Military Cross. 

Propaganda in neutral countries has played 
an important part during the war. The just 
cause of the Allies has had no stauncher support- 
ers or better propagandists than the hundred and 
twenty-five thousand or more Armenians in the 
United States, while the Great Tragedy of Ar- 
menia has incidentally added to the armoury of 
the Allies a melancholy but formidable moral 
weapon. 



VII 



ARMENIA THE BATTLE-GROUND OF ASIA MINOR AND VIC- 
TIM OF CONTENDING EMPIRES 

N^ O country and people have suffered so 
severely from the clash of rival empires, 
both in war and diplomacy, as have Armenia and 
the Armenians, so far as is known to the recorded 
history of the world. Her geographical position 
has made Armenia the cockpit of ambitious em- 
pires and conquerors, and the highway of their 
armies in Western Asia, much as Belgium and 
Poland have been the battle-grounds of Europe. 
But whereas in these European battle-grounds 
the invading armies have generally moved east 
and west only, Armenia has endured the horrors 
of invasion, time after time, from north, south, 
east and west. Then, again, Armenia being a 
much older country, the record of her suffering 
from the invading armies of her stronger neigh- 
bours, ''hacking their way" through her territory, 
extends over a proportionately longer period 
than that of Belgium and Poland. Armenia has 
been invaded and ravaged in turn by Babylo- 

89 



90 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

nians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Hittites, Parthians, 
Macedonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, 
Tartars and Turks. Only during the first cen- 
tury B.C. did she succeed in subduing all her 
neighbours, and establishing a short-lived empire 
of her own, extending from the Mediterranean 
to the Caspian. 

The analogy between Armenia and her Euro- 
pean co-sufferers from the ills of aggressive Im- 
perialism ceases altogether, however, when we 
come to the period of Turkish domination. The 
blood-stained history of that regime is well 
enough known. Periodic explosions have re- 
minded Europe of the existence of the inferno 
of unbridled lust, corruption and predatory bar- 
barism which this unhappy people have been 
fated to endure for centuries. What has not been 
brought into sufficient relief is the fact that this 
"bloody tyranny" could have long since been 
brought to an end, or, at all events, effectively 
curbed, if it had not been for the jealousies and 
rivalries of the great modern Christian empires. 
The history of the acts of European diplomacy 
in regard to Armenia and the Near East during 
the last sixty or seventy years is not one of which 
the diplomats and statesmen concerned can be 
particularly proud. Who can claim for them 
to-day to have served, in the sum total of their 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 91 

results, either the interests of the Christian sub- 
jects of the Porte, the progress of civilization, the 
material interests of the Great Powers them- 
selves, or the supreme interests of peace? 

Mr. Balfour says in his famous Dispatch to 
the British Ambassador to the United States 
that "Turkey has ceased to be a bulwark of 
peace," thereby implying, obviously, that Turkey 
had played that part before. Mr. Balfour is a 
great authority on political history, and when 
he avers that Turkey has been a "bulwark of 
peace" she must have filled such a role at some 
period of her history. But to his Christian sub- 
jects, at any rate, the Turk has never brought 
peace. He has brought them fire and sword and 
a riot of unbridled lust, rapacity, corruption and 
cruelty unparalleled even in the Dark Ages. The 
only peace he has brought them has been the 
peace of death and devastation. He has not even 
left trees to break the awful silence of desolation 
which he has spread over this fair and fertile land 
once throbbing with human life and activity. 
That is the price paid for whatever part Turkey 
may have played in the past as a bulwark of 
international peace. Professor Valran of the 
University of Aix-en-Provence estimates the Ar- 
menian population of Turkey in the beginning 



92 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

of the nineteenth century at 5,000,000/ The 
population of the not too healthy island of Java 
was the same at the same period. Under the ex- 
cellent rule of the Dutch, the population of that 
island has grown up to over 35,000,000 during 
the century. What has become of the Arme- 
nians, one of the most virile and prolific races of 
the w^orld living in a healthy country? Let the 
friends and protectors of the Turk and his sys- 
tem of government give the answer. In particu- 
lar let those answer who, with the Turks' black 
and bloodstained record of centuries before them, 
have, nevertheless, the effrontery to maintain, at 
this hour of day, that the Turk has not been given 
a fair chance. The blood of the myriads of inno- 
cents who have fallen victims to the Turks' in- 
curable barbarism throughout these centuries, 
cries aloud against such a brazen and deliberate 
travesty of the truth. 

One of the principal enactments of the Treaty 
of Paris was to admit Turkey into the comity of 
the Great Powxrs of Europe. To-day, after a 
probation of sixty years, at a fearful cost to her 
Christian subjects, it is at last admitted that 
Turkey has proved herself "decidedly foreign to 
Western civilization." Could there be a more 
crushing condemnation of the judgment of the 

^ Le SemapJiore de Marseille, November 20, 1915. 




ARMENIA AND THE WAR 9S 

statesmen responsible for that treaty in regard 
to the Turk? The more one studies the record of 
the Turk, the more one marvels at the unbounded 
confidence placed in his promises of reform by 
some of the greatest statesmen of modern times. 
In vain have I ransacked the history books in 
search of an instance v^here the Turk carried out, 
or honestly attempted to carry out, a single one 
of his numerous promises of reform. Every one 
of them was a snare and a pretence designed 
merely to oil the wheels of a cunning diplo- 
macy or tide over a momentary embarrassment. 
Whether it was the Sultan or Grand Vizier or 
Ambassador, whenever the Turk made a promise 
to improve the lot of his Christian subjects, he 
had made up his mind beforehand that that prom- 
ise would never be performed.^ 

^ I am indebted to my friend Mr. H. N. Mosditchian 
for the following account of an incident which throws 
some light on the ways of the Turk — 

"The massacres of Sassoon in 1893-1894, first described 
at the time by Dr. Dillon in The Daily Telegraph, and 
the first of the series that drenched Armenia with the blood 
of over 200,000 of her sons and daughters, raised such a 
cry of horror and indignation throughout the civilised 
world that Great Britain, France and Russia, through their 
Embassies at Constantinople, prepared a Scheme of Re- 
forms, known as the Scheme of the 11th of May 1895, 
and after much difficulty and long negotiations obtained 
thereto the approval of Abd-ul-Hamid, 'the Red Sultan.' 

"I was with the Patriarch when the Hon. M. H. Her- 
bert, Secretary to the British Embassy, brought to the 



94 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Since the beginning of last century Russia has 
been, by reason of her geographical contiguity, 

Patriarchate the good tidings of the Sultan's acceptance 
of the Scheme. Upon his special advice, the Patriarch 
sent there and then telegraphic instructions to all the 
Armenian Bishoprics in the provinces to chant Te Deums 
in the churches and to offer up prayers for the benign and 
magnanimous Padishah! 

"I was again with the Patriarch a day or two after 
when telegrams began to pour in from the provinces an- 
nouncing a fresh outbreak of massacres throughout the 
country. I hastened to the Embassies of the Six Great 
Powers to give them the appalling news and to ask for 
their immediate assistance. As is well known, they did or 
could do nothing, and the massacres went on, unchecked 
and unbridled, assuming every day larger dimensions and 
a better organised thoroughness. . . ." 

I called on Judge Terrell, the American Ambassador, 
also. "I am not at all surprised," said he, "at these fresh 
massacres. I knew they would be coming, so much so that 
the moment I heard that the Sultan was about to affix his 
signature to the Scheme of Reforms, I hastened to the 
Grand Vezir and insisted upon his sending telegraphic 
orders to all the Valis to take good care that no American 
subject was hurt. The Grand Vezir protested of course 
that there was no necessity for such orders inasmuch as 
peace and security reigned supreme in all the Vilayets, but 
I told him that I knew what was going to happen shortly 
as well as he did, and refused to leave until he had de- 
spatched the telegrams in my presence." Judge Terrell 
then told me that it had long been known to him that the 
Valis of all the Vilayets had received standing orders from 
the Sultan to massacre the Armenians (a) whenever they 
should discover any revolutionary movement among them, 
(b) whenever they should hear of a British, French or 
Russian invasion of Turkish territory, and (c) whenever 
they should hear that the Sultan had agreed to and signed 
a Scheme of Reforms. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 95 

practically the only Power which the Turk has 
really feared. In contrast with the near Eastern 
policies of the Western Powers, Russian policy 
has been almost invariably hostile to the Turk 
since the days of Peter the Great. Of course, 
this was not always pure altx'uism on the part of 
the rulers of Russia. But, whatever the motive, 
Russian policy certainly coincided absolutely 
with the interests of humanity and civilization. 
And while in the West the policy of "buttressing 
the Turk" (in the words of the Bishop of Ox- 
ford) often met with strong opposition among 
the democracies of England and France, Russian 
policy in regard to the Turk has always enjoyed 
the unanimous support of the Russian people, 
who being the Turk's neighbour and having had 
several wars with him, knew his true nature from 
prolonged personal contact. The one departure 
from Russia's traditional policy was Count Lo- 
banoff' s regrettable — and I may say inexplicable 
— refusal to take joint action with Britain and 
France to put a term upon the butcheries of 1895- 
96, and adopt such effective measures as would 
perhaps have put it beyond the power of the 
Turk to indulge again in his diabolical orgies of 
cold-blooded barbarism. 

His fear of Russia, which acted as a wholesome 
restraint upon the predatory tendencies of the 



96 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Turk, was weakened by the Treaty of Paris tak- 
ing away from Russia her effective protectorate 
over the Christian subjects of the Porte, and was 
removed altogether by the Treaty of Berlin and 
the Cyprus Convention. The Turk was quick 
to understand that the Western Powers would 
not permit Russia to intervene on behalf of his 
persecuted Christian subjects. He saw that con- 
ditions were favourable for putting into execu- 
tion his "policy" of getting rid of his Christian 
subjects, and he forthwith set to work to carry 
out his foul project. 

Events have proved the Treaty of Berlin to 
have been the masterpiece of Bismarck's policy 
of "divide et impera." It created, as it was de- 
signed to create, a deep and bitter feeling of mis- 
trust and antagonism between Great Britain and 
Russia, which gave Germany her chance of gain- 
ing a strong foothold in the Ottoman Empire. 

The appearance of Germany upon the scene 
created new dangers, which have proved all but 
fatal to the Armenian people. 

The Emperor William II, on his return from 
his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, paid a visit to, 
and fraternized with, the murderer of 250,000 
Armenians who had died for the sake of the very 
Christ from the scene of whose life the Christian 
emperor had just returned. This, by the way, 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 97 

was in characteristic contrast with King Ed- 
ward's refusal of the Sultan's offer of his por- 
trait about the same time. This act of the great 
and humane English king has touched the hearts 
of Armenians, who cherish a deep and reverent 
affection for his memory. 

The result of the Emperor William's visit to 
Abdul Hamid was the Baghdad Railway and 
many other concessions, and no doubt a great 
scheme of a future Germano-Turkish Empire in 
the East. 

I believe it was Dr. Paul Rohrbach, the well- 
known German writer on Near Eastern affairs, 
who suggested some years ago that the deporta- 
tion of the Armenians from their homes and their 
settlement in agricultural colonies along the 
Baghdad Railway would be the best way to make 
that line pay quick and handsome dividends. 

Some time ago I read in The Near East the 
account of a conversation between an American 
missionary and a German officer travelling to- 
gether in Anatoha. The German officer con- 
fessed that what he had seen was horrible, more 
horrible than anything he had ever seen before; 
"but," he added, "what could we do? The Ar- 
menians were in the way of our military aims.'' 
Supposing that resistance to massacre by Arme- 
nian men was interpreted by the German agents 



98 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

in Turkey as being "in the way of their mihtary 
aims," what possible excuse could there be for 
the abominable treatment, the torture, the 
slaughter, and the driving to misery and death of 
hundreds of thousands of women and children? 
Were they also in the way of their military aims ? 
While the Turks were butchering Christians 
in their hundreds of thousands, the German Em- 
peror was presenting a sword of honour to the 
Sultan of Turkey and showering honours upon 
Enver Pasha at his headquarters. While thou- 
sands of Christian children and women were be- 
ing mercilessly slaughtered and driven to death" 
by Germany's ally, and their bodies thrown to the 
wolves and vultures in the Mesopotamian deserts, 
the German Government was making provision 
for the housing and tuition of thousands of Turk- 
ish youths in the technical schools of Germany to 
fill the places of the "eliminated" Armenians. 
What have Christian Germans to say to all this? 
Do the Johanniter Knights, of whom the Kaiser 
is himself Grand Master, approve of these pro- 
ceedings? Do they think that He who said "in- 
asmuch as ye have done it unto one of these little 
ones, ye have done it unto Me" knows of any dis- 
tinction of race? How can German Christians, 
from their rulers downwards, face God and the 
Son of God in the intimacy of their prayers after 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 99 

sanctioning these black deeds which are the very 
negation of God and the teaching of Christ? Do 
the rulers of Germany and Turkey and the pro- 
tagonists of the Reventlow doctrine believe that 
empires, railways, or any other schemes of expan- 
sion, built upon foundations of the blood and tears 
of hundreds of thousands of human beings, will 
endure and prosper and bring forth harvests of 
plenty and peace and happiness to their promo- 
ters, their children, and their children's children? 
They are mistaken. My word may count for 
naught to the rulers and leaders of mighty states ; 
but it is true. We are an ancient people. "We 
have seen empires come and empires go." We 
have been ground for centuries in the mill of the 
ruthless clash of contending empires ; but in spite 
of our long and bitter sufferings our belief to-day 
is as strong as ever in the existence of another 
mill, the mill of Divine Justice, which grinds in 
its own good time, and may grind slow, but "it 
grinds exceeding small." Who will doubt or 
deny that violence to women and children and un- 
offending, defenceless men, "every hair of whose 
head is numbered," will not be forgiven by their 
just and Almighty Creator; that the sacrifice of 
them for ulterior selfish objects will not be over- 
looked ? Political and military acts of the mighti- 
est empires, entailing injustice, violence and suf- 



100 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

fering to weaker peoples will bring Nemesis in 
their train in due course. The idol with feet of 
clay, sunk in the blood of innocentSj cannot en- 
dure. Sooner or later it must fall. 



VIII 



THE BLUE-BOOK THE EPIC OF ARMENIa's MARTYRDOM, 

THE REVELATION OF HER SPIRIT AND CHARACTER 

"truth" ON THE ARMENIANS : A DIGRESSION 



TO realize, even approximately, the unimagi- 
nable barbarities that have been committed 
by the Turks during the Great Armenian Trag- 
edy of 1915, it is necessary to read the Blue-book 
itself. But the Blue-book is a bulky volume, and 
the average man or woman has so many calls on 
his or her attention in these stirring and momen- 
tous times, that I fear it will not be read as widely 
as it deserves to be read in the interests of human- 
ity, Christianity, and civilization. I have, there- 
fore, thought it desirable to quote a number of 
extracts which will give the reader some idea of 
the nature and magnitude of the horrors chron- 
icled in that fearful epic of a nation's martyrdom, 
in the hope that they may thereby reach a wider 
circle of the public. 

Apart from giving the reader a general idea 
of the atrocities themselves, I have selected and 
grouped the extracts with the object of calling 
attention to the incidental or subsidiary morals 

101 



102 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

and lessons they convey, which have received lit- 
tle or no notice in the Press reviews. The Blue- 
book reveals the spirit, the character and the 
ideals which lay hidden under the unattractive 
outside appearance of the Armenians, upon which 
has been based their mostly superficial judgment 
of them by European travellers. Often under 
the influence of a sense of indebtedness for an 
escort of Zaptiehs "graciously placed at their 
disposal by a kindly vali" (in whose harem were 
probably languishing a dozen or more enslaved 
women) , they have seldom paused to understand 
the tragedy of the dour, subdued, anxious mien 
of the Armenian peasant seen trudging wearily 
along in the highways and byways of Asia Minor. 
They little realized that the Armenian lived under 
the strain of constant terrorism; that he never 
knew when the honour of his wife or sister might 
be violently assaulted ; when he might be stabbed 
in the back ; when his cattle might be driven away 
or his crops burned or stolen. He was afraid 
even of a too attractive personal appearance, lest 
he should excite the cupidity and jealousy of his 
Turkish neighbour. If he fell upon his perse- 
cutor and slew him in defence of the honour of 
his womenfolk, it meant the wiping out not only 
of his family but of his whole village. His own 
government was his deadly enemy, bent upon his 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 103 

destruction. This has been the tragedy of the 
Armenian's life for generations. It has been Ht- 
tle known in the West because Armenia is a long 
way off, and few European travellers have 
stopped to look below the surface. He has lived 
with the yatagan hanging over his head, like the 
sword of Damocles, from birth to death. Virile, 
industrious, patient, long-suffering, but never 
despondent, he has clung to his faith, his soil, his 
ancient culture, his nationality and ideals of civil- 
ization with a tenacity that centuries of "bloody 
tyranny" have tended only to steel more and 
more. That he has succeeded in preserving the 
ideals which have cost his nation such heartbreak- 
ing sacrifices is abundantly proved by the Blue- 
book. Here is one evidence: "Mr. Yarrow, see- 
ing all this, said, 'I am amazed at the self-control 
of the Armenians, for though the Turks did not 
spare a single wounded Armenian, the Arme- 
nians are helping us to save the Turks' " (p. 70) . 
But of all the tales of calm, dignified heroism 
in face of death recorded in the Blue-book, W. 
Effendi's letter (p. 133, and 504 of the Blue- 
book) written on the eve of his, his young wife's 
and infant child's deportation to what he knew to 
be certain death, will ever stand out as an im- 
pressive example of the noblest heroism, the 
highest conception of the teaching of Christ and 



104 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

a complete triumph of the spirit, unsurpassed 
in the annals of Christian martyrdom. "May 
God forgive this nation all their sin which they 
do without knowing," wrote this true follower 
of Christ, while he was making ready for his and 
his loved ones' journey to sorrow and death. It 
recalls the story of St. Stephen's martyrdom. 
W. EiFendi's letter and Nurse Cavell's immortal 
words, "patriotism is not enough," strike me as 
the two most remarkable utterances delivered 
spontaneously by heroic spirits in proof of the 
bankruptcy of the "fright fulness" to which they 
were on the point of falling victims. 

There was a short notice in Truth of January 
31, 1917, in connection with Armenia Day which 
contained the following remark: "Some people 
despise these 'eleventh Allies' as a mercenary 
race, but others, like Mr. Noel Buxton, depict 
them in a much more attractive light." 

With the reader's indulgence I will digress 
for a moment to deal briefly with this totally un- 
justified stigma cast wantonly upon the charac- 
ter of a sorely tried nation. 

In the unofFensive sense of the word the whole 
human family may be called "mercenary." I 
have not met or heard of a race of men in any of 
the explored parts of the earth, whatever their 
colour, creed, or degree of civilization, who had 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 105 

any conscientious objection to the acquiring of 
as much money as they could acquire by legit- 
imate and honourable means. I do not suppose 
Truth itself is dispensing its very helpful "Rub- 
ber tips" week by week solely for the good of 
humanity. But if it is asserted that the Ar- 
menian race puts the love of gold before every- 
thing else in life, such an assertion at this junc- 
ture is a particularly ill-timed, offensive and un- 
worthy aspersion. A mercenary race, forsooth! 
If the Armenian race had valued gold above its 
loyalty to its faith and nationality; if it had at- 
tached greater value to material prosperity than 
to spiritual ideals and principles, it would have 
accepted Islam centuries ago — Heaven knows 
the temptation was great — ^^and won a predom- 
inant position for itself in Asia Minor. It would 
be counted to-day not by two or three, but by 
twenty or thirty millions. But under the longest 
and bloodiest pressure endured by any people in 
history, culminating almost in its extermination, 
it refused to sell its soul. 

Thousands of Armenians could have saved 
their lives by feigning to accept Islam, but, with 
few exceptions, they refused to commit even that 
measure of spiritual dishonesty, which would per- 
haps not have been considered unpardonable un- 
der the circumstances. There is scarcely any in- 



106 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

stance of an Armenian woman trafficking her 
honour for money; which is, perhaps, the most 
eloquent refutation of the calumny. 

What good object has Truth served by giving 
currency in its columns to this libel against an 
oppressed people, almost wiped out because of its 
Christian faith and its sympathy for and support 
of the Allied cause? Even if there were the re- 
motest justification for it one would have thought 
that Truth would have shrunk, at this dark and 
bitter hour, from adding insult to the agony of a 
people plunged into sorrow and mourning for 
the loss of half its number. But the assertion 
that the Armenians are a mercenary race is not 
true. It is part of the propaganda carried on by 
a very few people who are either blinded by un- 
reasoning prejudice, or have some special purpose 
to serve, or believe that they are discharging some 
kind of duty by whitewashing the Turk and 
blackening the Armenian. I believe that these 
admirers of the votaries of ''bloody tyranny" on 
the Bosphorus are very few indeed in this coun- 
try. Whoever they are and whatever their mo- 
tives, conscious of my obligations to the generous 
hospitality of this country — for which I cannot 
be too grateful — but taking my stand on the 
broader ground of Humanity, I wish to say to 
them, "Though you are in Great Britain, you are 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR lOT 

not of it; though this great, humane and Christian 
country may be your physical home by accident 
of birth, you will find your congenial 'spiritual 
home' in the offices of Count Reventlow and the 
Tanine. Charity, after all, is a matter between 
a man and his conscience and his God. If you 
cannot give your money to a starving woman or 
child without massacring them morally, while 
the Turk is taking their life, pray spare your 
money and let the Armenian die; it will please 
the Turk and his allies. Perhaps it would be 
more in harmony with your sentiments and polit- 
ical faith to lend your money to your friend the 
Turk. When the war is over he may need a fresh 
supply of arms, for even the tender limbs of the 
countless women and children on whom he has 
practised his 'chivalry' may well have blunted and 
worn his old stock." 

There are mercenary Armenian individuals as 
there are mercenary persons in every nation. It 
may be that, debarred from government posts ex- 
cept when he was indispensable, the town Ai-me- 
nian in Turkey, like the Greek and Syrian, has 
been compelled to direct his energies into com- 
mercial channels in a larger proportion than 
free and independent nations. Naturally, also, 
through generations of ruthless persecution, the 
Armenian nation has thrown up a flotsam and 



108 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

jetsam of indigents wandering far and wide in 
search of security and the means of earning a 
living. But to brand the whole Armenian race 
as "mercenary" is malevolent nonsense, or cre- 
dulity due to a total ignorance of the facts. Sev- 
enty or eighty per cent, of the Armenians in 
Turkish as well as Russian Armenia are peasants, 
farmers and artisans. That is approximately 
true also of the Persian Armenians. Even in the 
United States the majority of the immigrants 
have taken to fruit-growing in California. Ar- 
menians who have the means to give their sons a 
good education almost invariably make them fol- 
low a profession in preference to commerce, as 
witness the number of Armenian university pro- 
fessors, doctors, lawyers and some artists and 
painters of considerable merit in the United 
States.^ Probably no people have made the sac- 
rifices made by Armenians, in proportion to their 
means, for the relief of distress during the war. 
There have been a few exceptions among the very 
rich whose moral sense has been blunted by lux- 

•^ Visitors to the San Francisco Exhibition will have seen 
and admired the work of the Armenian sculptor Haik Par- 
tigian, whose exhibits, I am told by one who saw them, 
were among the best, if not the best, of all the exhibits in 
the Sculpture Section. Russia's great marine painter 
Aivazovsky was an Armenian. The recently instituted 
Society of Armenian Artists is holding its first exhibition 
in Tiflis at the time of writing. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 109 

ury and self-indulgence. They can be counted 
on the fingers of one hand. They belong to that 
class of cosmopolitan financiers and traders who 
are no more thrilled by the music of their coun- 
try's or any country's name; who are unmoved 
by the cry of starving women and children of 
their own or any race; whose home is the world 
and whose god is gold ; who are no more the mas- 
ters but the slaves of money. But this, again, is 
not peculiar to Armenians; very far from it. It 
is a fraternity that embraces members of every, 
or almost every, race; and Armenians are barely 
represented upon it. It is palpably misleading 
as it is inaccurate to assert that these represent 
the Armenian nation. In fact, as far as my 
knowledge goes, the masses of the Armenian peo- 
ple are ashamed of them, because their worship 
of gold and vanity are alien to the national spirit, 
and bring discredit upon the nation. For genera- 
tions Armenian educational and religious institu- 
tions have been maintained by voluntary grants ; 
and I do not know that any European citizen 
bears a heavier burden for the needs of his nation 
than does the individual Armenian. 

It must not be supposed from w^hat I have said 
that ^11, or the majority, of rich Armenians have 
been deaf or indifferent to their country's need. 
That would be a mistake and an injustice. On 



110 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the whole their response to the call of their af- 
flicted country has been satisfactory, considering 
that they had obligations to the belligerent coun- 
tries to which they owed allegiance. I know of 
one contribution of £30,000,"^ while ten Moscow 
merchants raised a million roubles between them 
for their nation's needs. A prominent Armenian 
physician has relinquished a large and remuner- 
ative practice at Petrograd to superintend per- 
sonally the administration of an orphanage at 
Erzerum, which he has opened on his own private 
account. The Catholicos's palace at Etchmiadzin 
was converted into a hospital for refugees in the 
early months of 1915. Almost every Armenian 
peasant family in the Caucasus have housed and 
cared for one or more refugees in their humble 
cottages ever since the influx of their distressed 
kinsmen from the other side of the frontier in the 
spring and summer of 1915. I have not mar- 
shalled these facts in a spirit of flaunting the 
virtues of my race — ^we certainly hold no monop- 
oly of all the virtues, or indeed of all the vices, 
to which human nature is heir — but I know of 
no better way to disprove the baseless aspersions 

^ It was reported in the Tiflis papers, after the above 
was written, that Mr. Mantashian, the Baku oil king, has 
made a further donation of ^£60,000 for agricultural im- 
provements, and offered thirty thoroughbreds to improve 
the breed of horses in Armenia. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 111 

assiduously disseminated by some interested peo- 
ple for purposes of pro-Turkish propaganda and 
accepted by the credulous as true. 

Lord Bryce has known the Armenian people 
longer and more intimately than any eminent 
European statesman, historian and diplomatist 
has ever done before, and his dictum will no 
doubt be generally accepted as that of a great and 
final authority. I therefore make no apology 
for quoting his lordship's most recent utterance 
on the subject reported in the Journal of the 
Royal Society of Arts, February 2, 1917 — 

"Having known a very large number of Ar- 
menians, he had been greatly struck, not only 
with their high level of intelligence and industry, 
but also by their intense patriotism. He did not 
know of any people who had shown greater cour 
stancy, patience and patriotism under difficulties 
and sufferings than the Armenians. He person- 
ally had always found them perfectly loyal. He 
had frequently had occasion to give them confi- 
dential advice and to trust them with secrets, 
and never on any occasion had he found that con- 
fidence misplaced. ... As a proof of their loy- 
alty and devotion to their country he might men- 
tion that the Armenians living in America had 



112 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

contributed sums enormous in proportion to their 
number and resources, for they were nearly all 
persons of small means, for the relief of the ref- 
ugees who had been driven out by the Turkish 
massacres. No people during the war had done 
more in proportion to their capacities than the 
Armenians had done for the relief of their suffer- 
ing fellow-countrymen. A large number of them 
were also fighting as volunteers in the armies of 
France, where they had displayed the utmost 
courage and valour in the combats before Ver- 
dun." 

To return to the extracts from the Blue-book. 
Group "A" affords a melancholy abundance of 
indisputable evidence that it was not Kurds and 
brigands alone who did Satan's work in Armenia, 
but that the chief culprits were Turkish officials, 
high and low, officers, soldiers, gendarmes and 
rabble ; even a member of parliament took a turn ! 
They not only played the principal part in the 
vast and revolting carnival of blood, lust and 
savagery, but they took a delight and pride in 
the part they played, and laughed at the suffer- 
ings and tortures of their victims.^ 

^ Some of the most distressing and disgraceful cases of 
Turkish bestiality appeared in Doctor (Major) Aspland's 
report on the hospital at Van, which was under his charge 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 113 

Group "B" bears evidence of a heroism and 
fidelity in torture and death, to faith, honour and 
the ideal of nationality, unsurpassed in the his- 
tory of mankind, which must redound to the eter- 
nal glory of Christianity and to the honour of 
the Armenian name. I respectfully suggest for 
consideration by the Heads of the Christian 
Churches that a day should be fixed to commemo- 
rate annually the martyrdom of this vast number 
of Armenian Christians. 

Group "C" contains proofs of the conduct of 
insurgent Armenians in the unequal struggles 
for self-defence, and it should be remembered 
that these are but a few instances, mainly of what 
was seen or heard of by foreigners. The ruined 
towns and villages, the silent fields and highways 
of this land of blood and tears, what secrets of 
desperate heroism in defence of wife and child, 
mother and sister, these guard will probably 
never be known. Group "C" also contains evi- 

as representative of the Lord Mayor's Armenian Relief 
Fund. Describing some of the individual cases brought to 
him for treatment. Dr. Aspland says — 

"Here is a young woman leaving hospital to-day, who 
was raped by eight Kurds. She has suffered for months, 
and even now, in spite of operations, will be crippled for 
the rest of her life. Here is a small girl aged five, sim- 
ilarly treated hy Turhs, and is now lying in plaster of 
Paris in order to recover from injury to the hip joint." — 
{Ararat, October 1916, p. 172.) 



114 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

dence of the fact that the Turks had to employ 
considerable bodies of troops to overcome the 
desperate resistance of Armenians in many 
places, such as Moush, Sassoon, Van, etc. A 
third feature in this group is, that the Turks at- 
tributed their defeats in the Caucasus to the 
Armenians.^ 

Taken together, these extracts, and the Blue- 
book from which they are taken, form a better 
mirror of the characteristics of the two races than 
all that has been written on the subject for a cen- 
tury. They show the radical dissimilarity of 
their natures, and the vast difference between the 
respective stages of civilization in which the two 
races find themselves. 

Was it Buddha or Confucius who said that 
the principal difference between man and the rest 
of the animal world is, that man possesses the 
feeling of pity for the pain and suffering of his 
fellow-men or anijqials? What would they think 
of this strange race of human beings who delight 
in torture and murder, sparing neither sex nor 
age, nor even unborn babes and their mothers; 
who inflict pain and jeer at their victims? 

I remember reading in one of Mr. Lloyd 
George's speeches not long ago: "It is not the 

^ Compare this with the diary of a Turkish officer, re- 
ported in the Russkaia Viedomosti (p. 75). 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 115 

trials one has to go through in life, but the way 
one faces them that matters," or words to that 
effect. This is as true of nations as it is of indi- 
viduals. "In the reproof of chance lies the true 
proof of men," and of nations. How has the 
Armenian nation conducted itself in this great 
upheaval and borne the terrible ordeal revealed 
by the Blue-book: an ordeal the horror and mag- 
nitude of which it is absolutely beyond the power 
of the human mind to imagine? The Blue-book 
itself furnishes the answer. From the first day 
of the war, Armenians in all countries understood 
the nature of the issues involved. They had no 
doubt on which side lay their sympathies, which 
were never influenced by the varying fortunes 
of the war. They were exposed to grave risks 
and paid a terrible price. Could there be a better 
proof of intellectual rectitude and the sincerity 
of sentiment? This, I trust, will silence for ever 
the dastardly reflections often cast upon the hon- 
esty of the Armenian people. There are some 
dishonest Armenians as there are some dishonest 
men in all nations. But, whether through preju- 
dice, malice, or ignorance of the facts, to brand 
as dishonest a whole people who have been on the 
Cross for half a millennium for their religion and 
patriotism, is unworthy of civilized and right- 
minded men. 



116 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

There are two other important facts which the 
Blue-book establishes beyond dispute. There 
was no revolt. Indeed, it would have been sheer 
madness on the part of the Armenians to attempt 
a rising when their able-bodied manhood was 
with the colours. The second fact the Blue-book 
reveals is, that the Armenian party leaders did 
their utmost to dissuade the Young Turks from 
joining the war. When the veil of war has lifted, 
and Europe comes to know more of what took 
place behind the scenes in Constantinople prior 
to Turkey's entry into the war, it will be seen how 
near the personal influence and eloquence of the 
Armenian deputy Zohrab came to turning the 
scale against the fateful and suicidal decision. 
This brilliant young jurist, an intimate personal 
friend of Enver and Talaat who sought his ad- 
vice almost daily, was murdered by their orders 
on the way to Diyarbekir. Armenians have been 
charged with a lack of political aptitude as well 
as with treachery to the Ottoman Empire. I 
would specially call the attention of those who 
hold these views — Europeans, Moslems, and 
thinking Turks themselves — to the fact that, at 
a time of crisis, it was the Armenians who saw 
clearly the path of safety for the empire, and 
showed their loyalty to it, in spite of all they had 
suffered in the past, by their councils of pru- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 117 

dence to which the Young Turks lent a deaf ear. 

While on the subject of the Blue-book, I can- 
not refrain from saying that I noted with pro- 
found regret the distinction that was evidently 
made, in many cases, between Catholic and Prot- 
estant Armenians on the one hand, and Gre- 
gorians on the other, in the efforts that were made 
to save them from massacre or deportation. It is 
no secret that His Holiness the Pope and Pres- 
ident Wilson intervened through their represen- 
tatives in Constantinople, and possibly in Berlin 
and Vienna, to stop the massacres. I record this 
fact with the deepest gratitude. Of course no 
such distinction can possibly have been made by 
the Pope or President Wilson, or their ambassa- 
dors ; it was probably due to the well-meant activ- 
ities of subordinates or of local European or 
American residents. 

No doubt it was better to save Catholics and 
Protestants than none at all, but the very idea of 
any distinction being thought of, under such 
fateful circumstances, is obviously contrary to 
the spirit of Christianity, and the passages re- 
ferring to it make sad reading to a Christian. 



IX 



EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE-BOOK 

Group A 

THE Archbishop of Erzeroum, His Grace 
Sempad, who, with the Vah's authoriza- 
tion, was returning to Constantinople, was mur- 
dered at Erzindjan by the brigands in the service 
of the Union and Progress Committee. The 
bishops of Trebizond, Kaisaria, Moush, Bitlis, 
Sairt, and Erzindjan have all been murdered by 
order of the Young Turk Government" (p. 23) . 

"The shortest method for disposing of the 
women and children concentrated in the various 
camps was to burn them. Fire was set to large 
wooden sheds in Alidjan, Megrakom, Khaskegh, 
and other Armenian villages, and these absolutely 
helpless women and children were roasted to 
death. . . . And the executioners, who seem to 
have been unmoved by this unparalleled sav- 
agery, grasped infants by one leg and hurled 

118 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 119 

them into the fire, calling out to the burning 
mothers: 'Here are your lions' " (p. 86). 

"The Turks boasted of having now got rid of 
all the Armenians. I heard it from the officers 
myself, how they revelled in thought that the 
Armenians had been got rid of" (p. 88). 

"It was heartrending to hear the cries of the 
people and children who were being burnt to 
death in their houses. The soldiers took great 
delight in hearing them, and when people who 
were out in the streets during the bombardment 
fell dead the soldiers merely laughed at them" 
(p. 90). 

"Every officer boasted of the number he had 
personally massacred as his share in ridding 
Turkey of the Armenian race" (p. 90) . 

"Mehmed Effendi, the Ottoman deputy for 
Gendje (Ginj ) , collected about forty women and 
children and killed them" (p. 94) . 

"Of the other children, a girl was taken away 
and only escaped many months later when the 
Russians came. Very reluctantly she poured out 



120 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

her story to the Stapletons, from which it ap- 
peared that she had been handed round to ten 
officers after the murder of her husband and his 
mother, to be their sport" (p. 225) . 

" 'See what care the Government is taking of 
the Armenians/ the Vali said, and she returned 
home surprised and pleased ; but when she visited 
the Orphanage again several days later, there 
were only thirteen of the 700 children left — the 
rest had disappeared. They had been taken, 
she learnt, to a lake six hours' journey by road 
from the town and drowned" (p. 260). 

"Sister D. A. was told, at Constantinople, that 
Turks of all parties were united in their approval 
of what was being done to the Armenians, and 
that Enver Pasha openly boasted of it as his per- 
sonal achievement. Talaat Bey, too, was re- 
ported to have remarked, on receiving news of 
Vartkes's^ assassination: 'There is no room in the 
Empire for both Armenians and Turks. Either 
they had to go or we' " (p. 261) . 

"^ Mr. Vartkes was an Armenian deputy in the Ottoman 
Parliament^ who was murdered, together with another 
deputy, Mr. Zohrab, when he was being escorted by gen- 
darmes from Aleppo to be court-martialled at Diyarbekir 
^(see Documents 7 and 9). — Editor. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 121 

"A crowd of Turkish women and children fol- 
low the police about like a lot of vultures, and 
seize anything they can lay their hands on, and 
when the more valuable things are carried out of 
a house by the police, they rush in and take the 
balance. I see this performance every day with 
my own eyes" (p. 289). 

"It was a real extermination and slaughter of 
the innocents, an unheard-of thing, a black page 
stained with the flagrant violation of the most 
sacred rights of humanity, of Christianity, of 
nationality" (p. 291). 

"When the Governor was petitioned to allow 
the infants to be entrusted to charitable Moslem 
families, to save them from dying on the journey, 
he replied: 'I vnll not leave here so much as the 
odour of the Armenians; go away into the des- 
erts of Arabia and dump your Armenia there' " 
(p. 328). 

"P. P., the college blacksmith, was so terribly 
beaten that a month later he was still unable to 
walk. Another was shod with horse-shoes. At 
Y., Mr. A. D. (brother-in-law of the pastor, 
A. E., who suffered martyrdom at Sivas twenty- 
one years ago) had his finger-nails torn out for 



122 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

refusing to accept Islam. *How/ he had an- 
swered, 'can I abandon the Christ whom I have 
preached for twenty years?' " (P. 378.) 

*'In Angora I learned that the tanners and the 
butchers of the city had been called to Asi Yoz- 
gad, and the Armenians committed to them for 
murder. The tanner's knife is a circular affair, 
while the butcher's knife is a small axe, and they 
killed people by using the instruments which they 
knew best how to use" (p. 385). 

"The Ottoman Bank President showed bank- 
notes soaked with blood and struck through with 
daggers with the blot round the hole, and some 
torn that had evidently been ripped from the 
clothing of people who had been killed — and these 
were placed on ordinary deposit in the bank by 
Turkish officers" (p. 386). 

*'One girl had hanged herself on the way ; oth- 
ers had poison with them. Mothers were holding 
out their beautiful babies and begging the mis- 
sionaries to take them" (p. 403) . 

"What was the meaning of all this? It was 
the deathblow aimed at Christianity in Turkey, 
or, in other words, the extermination of the Ar- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 123 

menian people — their extermination or amalga- 
mation" (p. 404). 

"During the weary days of travel I had as my 
companion a Turkish captain, who, as the hours 
dragged by, came to look on me with less of sus- 
picion, growing quite friendly at times. Arrived 

at the captain went out among the Armenian 

crowd and soon returned with an Armenian girl 
of about fifteen years. She was forced into a 
compartment of an adjoining railway coach, in 
company with a Turkish woman. When she saw 
that her mother was not allowed to accompany 
her, she began to realize something of the import 
of it all. She grew frantic in her efforts to es- 
cape, scratching at the window, begging, scream- 
ing, tearing her hair and wringing her hands, 
while the equally grief-crazed mother stood on the 
railway platform, helpless in her effort to save 
her daughter. The captain, seeing the uncon- 
cealed disapproval in my face, came up and said: 
'I suppose, Effendi, you don't approve of such 
things, but let me tell you how it is. Why, this 
girl is fortunate. I'll take her home with me, 
raise her as a Moslem servant in my house. She 
will be well cared for and saved from a w^orse 
fate — besides that, I even gave the mother a lira 
gold piece for the girl.' And, as though that 



IM ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

were not convincing enough, he added: *Why, 
these scoundrels have killed two of our Moslems 
right here in this city, within the last few days,' 
as though that were excuse enough, if excuse 
were needed, for annihilating the whole Arme- 
nian race. I could not refrain from giving him 
my version of the rotten, diabolical scheme, 
which, however, fell from his back like water" 
(p. 410). 

"I learned here, too, of a nurse who had been 
in one of the mission hospitals, who two days 
before my arrival there had become almost crazed 
by the fear of falling into the hands of the human 
fiends, and had ended her life with poison. Were 
these isolated or unusual instances, it would ex- 
cite no comment in this year of unusual things, 
but when we know of these things going on all 
over the empire, repeated in thousands of in- 
stances, we begin to realize the enormity of the 
crimes committed. I spoke again to the captain: 
'Why are you taking such brutal measures to 
accomplish your aim? Why not accept the offer 
of a friendly nation, which offers to pay transpor- 
tation if you will send these people out of the 
country to a place of safety?' He replied: *Why, 
don't you understand, we don't want to have to 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 125 

repeat this thing again after a few years? It's 
hot down in the deserts of Arabia, and there is 
no water, and these people can't stand a hot 
climate, don't you see?' Yes, I saw. Any one 
could see what would happen to most of them, 
long before Arabia was reached" (p. 411) . 

"Crowds of Turkish women were going about 
insolently prying into house after house to find 
valuable rugs or other articles" (p. 411). 

"The nation is being systematically done to 
death by a cruel and crafty method, and their ex- 
termination is only a question of time" (p. 432). 

"Women with little children in their arms, or 
in the last days of pregnancy, were driven along 
under the whip like cattle. Three diiFerent cases 
came under my knowledge where the woman was 
delivered on the road, and because her brutal 
driver hurried her along, she died of haemorrhage" 
(p. 472). 

"I saw one young woman drop down ex- 
hausted. The Turk gave her two or three blows 
with his stick and she raised herself painfully" 
(p. 484). 



126 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

"I saw two women, one of them old, the other 
very young and very pretty, carrying the corpse 
of another young woman; I had scarcely passed 
them wheji cries of terror arose. The girl was 
struggling in the clutches of a brute who was 
trying to drag her away. The corpse had fallen 
to the ground, the girl, now half -unconscious, 
was writhing by the side of it, the old woman was 
sobbing and wringing her hands" (p. 564). 

"Sixteen hundred Armenians have had their 
throats cut in the prisons of Diyarbekir. The 
Arashnort (bishop) was mutilated, drenched 
with alcohol, and burnt alive in the prison yard, 
in the middle of a carousing crowd of gendarmes, 
who even accompanied the scene with music. The 
massacres at Benia, Adiaman, the Selefka have 
been carried out deliberately ; there is not a single 
male left above the age of IS years; the girls have 
been outraged mercilessly; we have seen their 
mutilated corpses tied together in batches of four, 
eight, or ten, and cast into the Euphrates. The 
majority had been mutilated in an indescribable 
manner" (p. 21). 

"Five hundred young men were shot outside 
the town without any formality. During the 
following two days the same process was carried 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 127 

out with heartless and cold-blooded thoroughness 
in the eighty Armenian villages of Ardjish, Adil- 
jevas, and the rest of the district north of Lake 
Van. In this manner some 24,000 Armenians 
were killed in three days, their young women car- 
ried away and their homes looted" (p. 73). 

"According to Turkish Government statistics 
120,000 Armenians were killed in this district" 
(p. 95). 

"The immense procession, sinking under its 
agony and fatigue, forces itself along and moves 
forward without respite. . . . No pen can de- 
scribe what this tragic procession has endured, 
or what experiences it has lived through, on its 
interminable road. The least detail of them 
makes the human heart quail, and draws an un- 
quenchable stream of bitter tears from one's 
eyes. . . . Each fraction of the long procession 
has its individual history, its especial pangs. . . . 
Here is a mother with her six children, one on her 
back, the second clasped to her breast; the third 
falls down on the road, and cries and wails be- 
cause it cannot drag itself further. The three 
others begin to wail in sympathy, and the poor 
mother stands stock still, tearless, like a statue, 
utterly powerless to help" (p. 197). 



128 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

"Babies were shot in their mothers' arms, small 
children were horribly mutilated, women were 
stripped and beaten. The villages were not pre- 
pared for attack; many made no resistance; oth- 
ers resisted until their ammunition gave out" (p. 
36). 

"A little bride and a slim young girl sidled up 
to our wagon to talk. In reply to our talk they 
told us that they were *busy taking care of the 
babies.' We asked what babies, and they said: 
'Oh, those the effendis stop here; the mothers 
nurse them and then go.' We asked if there were 
many, and were told that every house was full. 
We were watched too closely to make calls pos- 
sible. Afterwards we found an officer ready to 
talk, who said: 'We take them off after a while 
and kill them. What can we do? The mothers 
cannot take them, and the Government cannot 
take care of them for ever' " (p. 359) . 

"This frightful suffering inspires no pity in 
the ruthless officials, who throw themselves upon 
their wretched victims, armed with whips and 
cudgels, without distinction of sex or age" (p. 

414). 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 129 

Group B 

"Many Armenian women preferred to throw 
themselves into the Euphrates with their infants, 
or committed suicide in their homes. The Eu- 
phrates and Tigris have become the sepulchre of 
thousands of Armenians" (p. 14). 

"While the Armenian refugees had been mutu- 
ally helpful and self-sacrificing, these Moslems 
showed themselves absolutely selfish, callous and 
indifferent to each other's sufiTering" (p. 42). 

"Many went mad and threw their children 
away; some knelt down and prayed amid the 
flames in which their bodies were burning ; others 
shrieked and cried for help which came from no- 
where" (p. 86). 

"Several young women, who were in danger of 
falling into the Turks' hands, threw themselves 
from the rocks, some of them with their infants 
in their arms" (p. 87) . 

"Among the massacred were two monks, one 
of them being the Father Superior of Sourp 
Garabed, Yeghishe Vartabed, who had a chance 



130 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

of escaping, but did not wish to be separated from 
his flock, and was killed with them" (p. 96) . 

"In some cases safety was bought by profess- 
ing Mohammedanism, but many died as martyrs 
to the faith" (p. 102). 

"The mother resisted, and was thrown over a 
bridge by one of the Turks. The poor woman 
broke her arm, but her mule-driver dragged her 
up again. Again the same Turks threw her 
down, with one of her daughters, from the top 
of the mountain. The moment the married 
daughter saw her mother and sister thrown down, 
she thrust the baby in her arms upon another 
woman, ran after them, crying, ^Mother, mother !' 
and threw herself down the same precipice" (p. 
274). 

"Sirpouhi and Santukht, two young women of 
Ketcheurd, a village east of Sivas, who were 
being led off to the harem, by Turks, threw them- 
selves into the river Halys, and were drowned 
with their infants in their arms. Mile. Sirpouhi, 
the nineteen-year-old daughter of Garabed Tu- 
fenj jian of Herag, a graduate of the American 
College of Marsovan, was offered the choice of 
saving herself by embracing Islam and marrying 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 131 

a Turk. Sirpouhi retorted that it was an out- 
rage to murder her father and then make her a 
proposal of marriage. She would have nothing 
to do with a godless and a murderous people; 
whereupon she, and seventeen other Armenian 
girls who had refused conversion, were shame- 
fully ill-treated and afterwards killed near 
TchamH-Bel gorge" (p. 325). 

"Many began to doubt even the existence of 
God. Under the severe strain many individuals 
became demented, some of them permanently. 
There were also some examples of the greatest 
heroism and faith, and some started out on the 
journey courageously and calmly, saying in fare- 
well: 'Pray for us. We shall not see you again 
in this world, but some time we shall meet again' " 
(p. 335). 

" *No, I cannot see what you see, and I cannot 
accept what I cannot understand.' So the ox- 
carts came to the door and took the family away. 
The wife was a delicate lady and the two beauti- 
ful daughters well educated. They were offered 
homes in harems, but said: 'No, we cannot deny 
our Lord. We will go with our father' " (p. 
354). 



13S ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

"In a mountain village there was a girl who 
made herself famous. Here, as everywhere else, 
the men were taken out at night and pitifully 
killed. Then the women and children were sent 
in a crowd, but a large number of young girls 
and brides were kept behind. This girl, who had 
been a pupil in the school at X., was sent before 
the Governor, the Judge, and the Council to- 
gether, and they said to her : 'Your father is dead, 
your brothers are dead, and all your other rela- 
tives are gone, but we have kept you because we 
do not wish to make you suffer. Now just be a 
good Turkish girl and you shall be married to a 
Turkish officer and be comfortable and happy.' 
It is said that she looked quietly into their 
faces and replied: 'My father is not dead, my 
brothers are not dead; it is true you have killed 
them, but they live in Heaven. I shall live with 
them. I can never do this if I am unfaithful to 
my conscience. As for marrying, I have been 
taught that a woman must never marry a man 
unless she loves him. This is a part of our reli- 
gion. How can I love a man who comes from a 
nation that has so recently killed my friends ? I 
should neither be a good Christian girl nor a good 
Turkish girl if I did so. Do with me what you 
wish.' They sent her away, with the few other 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 133 

brave ones, into the hopeless land. Stories of this 
kind can also be duplicated" (p. 355). 

"The men were finally convinced of the use- 
lessness of their efforts when one of the younger 
and prettiest girls spoke up for herself and said : 
'No one can mix in my decisions; I will not 
*'turn" [change her religion], and it is I myself 
that say it'" (p. 357). 

"Mr. A. F., a colporteur, had been willing to 
embrace Islam, but his wife refused to recognize 
his apostasy, and declared that she would go into 
exile with the rest of the people, so he went with 
his wife and was killed" (p. 378). 

"Again and again they said to me: 'Oh, if they 
would only kill me now, I would not care ; but I 
fear they will try to force me to become a Mo- 
hammedan' " (p. 403). 

"When we consider the number forced into 
exile and the number beaten to death and tor- 
tured in a thousand ways, the comparatively 
small number that turned JNIoslem is a tribute to 
the staunchness of their hold on Christianity" 
(p. 413). 



134j ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

"If the events of the past year demonstrate 
anything, they show the practical failure of Mo- 
hammedanism in its struggle for existence against 
Christianity — in its attempt to eliminate a race 
which, because of Christian education, has been 
proving increasingly a menace to stagnating 
Moslem civilization. We may call it political 
necessity or what not, but in essence it is a nom- 
inally ruling class, jealous of a more progressive 
Christian race, striving by methods of primitive 
savagery to maintain the leading place" (p. 413) . 

*^The courage of that brave little doctor's wife, 
who knew she must take her two babies and face 
starvation and death with them! Many began 
to come to her home — to her, for comfort and 
cheer, and she gave it. I have never seen such 
courage before. You have to go to the darkest 
places of the earth to see the brightest lights, 
to the most obscure spot to find the greatest 
heroes. 

"Her bright smile, with no trace of fear in it, 
was like a beacon light in that mud village, where 
hundreds were doomed. 

"It was not because she did not understand 
how they felt; she was one of them. It was not 
because she had no dear ones in peril; her hus- 
band was far away, ministering to those who were 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 135 

sending her and her babies to destruction" (p. 
418). 

"One woman gave birth to twins in one of those 
crowded trucks, and crossing a river she threw 
both her babies and then herself into the water'' 
(p. 420). 

"And how are the people going? As they 
came into B. M., weary and with swollen and 
bleeding feet, clasping their babes to their breasts, 
they utter not one murmur or word of complaint ; 
but you see their eyes move and hear the words: 
'For Jesus' sake, for Jesus' sake!' " (p. 478). 

"Let me quote from W. Effendi, from a letter 
he wrote a day before his deportation with his 
young wife and infant child and with the whole 
congregation- — 

" 'We now understand that it is a great miracle 
that our nation has lived so many years amongst 
such a nation as this. From this we realize that 
God can and has shut the mouths of lions for 
many years. May God restrain them! I am 
afraid they mean to kill some of us, cast some of 
us into most cruel starvation and send the rest 
out of this country; so I have very little hope of 
seeing you again in this world. But be sure that. 



136 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

by God's special help, I will do my best to en- 
courage others to die manly. I will also look for 
God's help for myself to die as a Christian. May 
this country see that, if we cannot live here as 
men, we can die as men. May many die as men 
of God. May God forgive this nation all their 
sin which they do without knowing. May the 
Armenians teach Jesus' life by their death, which 
they could not teach by their life or have failed 
in showing forth. It is my great desire to see 
a Reverend Ali, or Osman, or Mohammed. May 
Jesus soon see many Turkish Christians as the 
fruit of His blood. 

" 'May the war end soon, in order to save the 
Moslems from their cruelty (for they increase 
in that from day to day) and from their in- 
grained habit of torturing others. Therefore we 
are waiting on God, for the sake of the Moslems 
as well as of the Armenians. May He appear 
soon'" (p. 504). 

"Before the girls were taken, the Kaimakam 
asked each one, in the presence of the Principal 
of the College, whether they wanted to become 
Mohammedans and stay, or go. They all replied 
that they would go. Only Miss H. became a 
Mohammedan, and went to live with G. Profes- 
sors E. and F. F. had been arrested with other 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 137 

Armenians, but in the name of all the teachers 
some £250 to £300 were presented to the officials, 
and so they were let free" (p. 370). 

"The priests were among the first to be sent 
off. A Turk described how K. K. was killed. 
They stripped him of all his clothes, excepting 
his underclothing. With his hands bound behind 
his back, he knelt, with his son beside him, and 
they finished him off with axes, while he was 
praying. The same description was given of the 
execution of L. L. — how they took off his head 
by hacking down into his shoulders with axes 
and carving the head out like a bust" (p. 371). 

Group C 

"But the [Armenian] revolutionists conducted 
themselves with remarkable restraint and pru- 
dence; controlled their hot-headed youth; pa- 
trolled the streets to prevent skirmishes ; and bade 
the villagers endure in silence : better a village or 
two burned unavenged than that any attempt 
at reprisals should furnish an excuse for massa- 
cre" (p. 33). 

"Some of the rules for their men [the Arme- 
nian defenders of Van] were: 'Keep clean; do 



138 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

not drink ; tell the truth ; do not curse the religion 
of the enemy' " (p. 35) . 

*'But, enraged as Djevdet was by this unex- 
pected and prolonged resistance, was it to be 
hoped that he could be persuaded to spare the 
lives of one of these men, women and children?*' 
(p. 39). ^ 

"Not all the Turks had fled from the city 
[Van]. Some old men and women and children 
had stayed behind, many of them in hiding. The 
Armenian soldiers, unlike Turks, were not mak- 
ing war on such" (p. 41). 

"Our Turkish refugees cost us a fearful price. 
. . . Then, for four days more, two Armenian 
nurses cared for the [Turkish] sick ones at night 
and an untrained man nurse helped me during 
the daytime" (p. 42). 

"Mr. Yarrow, seeing all this, said: *I am 
amazed at the self-control of the Armenians, for 
though the Turks did not spare a single wounded 
Armenian, the Armenians are helping us to save 
the Turks — a thing that I do not believe even 
Europeans would do' " (p. 70) . 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 139 

"The Turks offered to the Georgians the prov- 
inces of Koutais and of Tiflis, the Batoum dis- 
trict and a part of the province of Trebizond ; to 
the Tartars, Shousha, the mountain country as 
far as Vladikavkaz, Bakou, and a part of the 
province of Elisavetpol; to the Armenians they 
offered Kars, the province of Erivan, a part of 
Ehsavetpol ; a fragment of the province of Erze- 
roum. Van and Bitlis. According to the Young 
Turk scheme, all these groups were to become 
autonomous under a Turkish protectorate. The 
Erzeroum Congress refused these proposals, and 
advised the Young Turks not to hurl themselves 
into the European conflagration — a dangerous 
adventure which would lead Turkey to ruin" (p. 
80). 

"The Turkish regulars and Kurds, amounting 
now to something like 30,000 altogether, pushed 
higher and higher up the heights and surrounded 
the main Armenian position at close quarters. 
Then followed one of those desperate and heroic 
struggles for life which have always been the 
pride of mountaineers. Men, women and chil- 
dren fought with knives, scythes, stones, and any- 
thing else they could handle. They rolled blocks 
of stone down the steep slopes, killing many of 



140 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the enemy. In a frightful hand-to-hand combat, 
women were seen thrusting their knives into the 
throats of Turks and thus accounting for many 
of them. On August 5, the last day of the fight- 
ing, the blood-stained rocks of Antok were cap- 
tured by the Turks. The Armenian warriors 
of Sassoun, except those who had worked round 
to the rear of the Turks to attack them on their 
flanks, had died in battle" (p. 87). 

"In the first week of July 20,000 soldiers ar- 
rived from Constantinople by way of Harpout 
with munitions and eleven guns, and laid siege 
to Moush" (p. 89). 

"The energetic Armenian committees have 
taken care of their own people, and have been 
unexpectedly generous to the Syrians who are 
quartered in their midst" (p. 107). 

"He met an Armenian officer who had escaped 
from the Turks, who told him of the deportation 
and massacre of the Armenians. He said that 
the attitude of the Turks towards the Armenians 
was more or less good at the beginning of the war, 
but it was suddenly changed after the Turkish 
defeat at Sari-Kamysh, as they laid the blame 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 14.1 

for this defeat upon the Armenians, though he 
could not tell why" (p. 231). 

"The fact cannot be too strongly emphasized 
that there was no 'rebellion' " (p. 34). 



GREAT BRITAIN AND ARMENIA— THE LATE DUKE OF AR- 
GYLL'S VIEWS AN APPEAL TO BRITAIN 



THERE is no brighter page in the glorious 
history of the British Empire than the rec- 
ords of the liberties that conduce to the content- 
ment and happiness of peoples — freedom of 
thought and worship, freedom of speech and asso- 
ciation, freedom of movement and habitation, 
freedom of language, etc. ; as well as measures of 
self-government varying in accordance with local 
needs and circumstances — granted unstintingly 
to the great family of nations and races constitut- 
ing that marvellous commonwealth. This policy 
of broad, liberal justice has proved, under the 
stern test of this great war, the highest states- 
manship and the strongest bond of empire. Free- 
dom, justice, humanity have proved an infinitely 
stronger impetus to loyalty than "frightfulness," 
a stronger cement, a superior and better "pay- 
ing" stock-in-trade of empire by far than the 
jack-boot and the yatagan. The conclusive and 
practical demonstration of this great fact by the 

142 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 143 

British Empire will probably exercise a far- 
reaching influence for good on the future poli- 
cies of empires and the liberties of mankind. The 
British Flag has not only carried security, order 
and justice wherever it has gone, it has scrupu- 
lously respected religious and national sentiment 
everywhere. It has not denied to the peoples 
under its sway, or attempted to suppress, the sen- 
timents and allegiances which it has itself held 
sacred. It has maintained the freedom of the 
seas as I believe no international device could 
have achieved it. I do not say this to please Brit- 
ish readers. I have lived and travelled among 
small peoples and subject peoples large and 
small, and that is the impression I have gathered. 
Thus the Union Jack has become a symbol of 
freedom and fairplay the world over, and per- 
secuted peoples have long had the conviction, 
deep down in their hearts, that British influence 
is continually at work towards their ultimate 
liberation. If we were to reverse Mr. Glad- 
stone's famous challenge concerning Austria, and 
ask, mutatis mutandis: "Can any one put his 
finger on the map of the world and say, 'Here the 
British Empire has wrought evil'?" it may be 
that Count Reventlow himself and the author of 
the "Hymn of Hate" might find themselves baf- 
fled. However opinions may diff*er as to the 



144 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

justice of some of her wars, the just and liberal 
treatment of the peoples that have come under 
British dominion is an indisputable historical fact 
to which the masses of mankind owe at least as 
much gratitude as they do to the French Revo- 
lution. Ireland may be singled out, and not 
without reason, if I may say so, as the one shaded 
spot on this bright page of the story of the spread 
of British liberty. To the neutral observer it 
certainly seems strange that Ireland, so near the 
home of liberty and the stronghold of democratic 
institutions, should be so long denied the full and 
free enjoyment of those blessings liberally be- 
stowed upon the more distant parts of the empire. 
Possibly neutral observers do not and cannot 
understand the difficulties and obstacles that have 
hitherto proved insuperable. It is outside the 
scope of my subject and beyond my competence 
to enter into a discussion of the Irish question 
here, but this much I may say, that Ireland should 
convince rulers in all countries that material 
prosperity alone "is no remedy." Security, order, 
prosperity, an efficient and equitable administra- 
tion may palliate but can never heal a political 
injustice. They can never satisfy the legitimate 
aspirations for self-rule of a high-spirited and 
cultured people conscious of a strong, indestruc- 
tible will as well as the undoubted capacity to 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 145 

govern itself. On the other hand, to compare 
the wrongs and sufferings of Ireland (and Po- 
land) with the agony of Armenia, as is sometimes 
done, is to compare a headache, an acute head- 
ache if you will, with the Black Death. 

It is in keeping with the ill-fortune that has 
dogged the footsteps of the Armenian people for 
five centuries that Armenia should have been the 
one exception to the rule; the one country which 
has been denied the blessings and benefits that 
have accrued to every small people which has 
come within the sphere of, or whose fortunes have 
been directly or indirectly affected by, the policy 
or interests of the British Empire. 

One of the most striking features of what has 
been said and written in this country on the treat- 
ment meted out by the Turks to their Armenian 
subjects during the war has been the paucity of 
reference to the effect, incidental and indirect no 
doubt, but the real and disastrous effect, never- 
theless, of British policy in Turkey since the 
Crimean War upon the fate of the Armenian sub- 
jects of the Turk. This is in contrast with what 
was said and written during previous massacres, 
and is no doubt attributable to the fact of the 
country being at war. I am not touching this 
aspect of the question in the way of a grievance. 
I well know, and most gratefully recognize what 



146 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the British Government and people have don^ 
and are still doing for us during the long and 
ghastly nightmare through which we are passing. 
The noble and unremitting efforts of Lord and 
Lady Bryce, Lady Frederick Cavendish, Mr. 
Aneurin WiUiams, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Miss 
Bobinson, Mrs. and Miss Hickson, Mrs. Cole, 
Mr. Noel Buxton and his brother the Bev. Har- 
old Buxton, Mr. Arthur G. Symonds, Mr. Llew 
Williams, the Bev. Greenland, Mr. Arnold J. 
Toynbee, and so many other friends of Armenia 
in this country, have placed us under a lasting 
debt of gratitude to them and to Britain. Lord 
Bryce's name will live in Armenian history as 
long as Armenia lasts. 

But I do think it is fair, in justice to the people 
of this great and righteous empire, to one-half of 
the Armenian nation who have fallen as heroes 
and heroines both in war and martyrdom, and to 
"the little blood" that is left to the Armenian 
people, that the facts in this connection should 
be placed frankly and fully before the British 
public at this juncture, so that it may be able to 
form an equitable estimate of the reparation due 
to the Armenians, not only for the crimes and 
ravages committed by the enemy during the war, 
but also in the light of the obhgations and respon- 
sibilities incurred by Europe in general and 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 147 

Great Britain in particular for the Armenian 
subjects of the Ottoman Empire by Art. 61 of 
the Treaty of Berlin and the Cyprus Conven- 
tion. 

I have said "Great Britain," but it would be 
more accurate to say "the British Government 
of the day," for I firmly believe — in fact, who 
will doubt? — that if the British people had had 
the slightest suspicion that the Treaty of Berlin 
and the Cyprus Convention had in them the 
germs of the disaster that has since overtaken the 
Christian subjects of the Porte, they would never 
have ratified those treaties. Nor do I suggest, 
I need hardly say, that the statesmen who are re- 
sponsible for these diplomatic instruments con- 
sciously and deliberately jeopardized the exist- 
ence of an ancient Christian people. Lord Salis- 
bury's sympathetic utterances in 1895-96 show 
unmistakably how deeply distressed he was at 
the grievous turn events had taken, and still more 
at the powerlessness of the Concert of Europe 
to save the Armenians from the position of ex- 
treme peril in which the Concert had placed them 
in 1878. 

Successive British Governments have made 
frequent attempts to improve the lot of the Ar- 
menians; but the more they tried the more the 
Turks massacred. There is no fairer-minded 



148 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

public than the British, whose hospitality and the 
blessings of whose rule I have gratefully enjoyed 
for many years, as have some thousands of my 
compatriots in almost every part of the empire. 
There is also no one more ready and anxious to 
pay his debt than the Briton when he knows what 
he owes. I have therefore no fear whatever of 
arousing any resentment by calling the attention 
of the British public to the existence of this old 
liability. On the contrary, I am convinced that 
the fact will be taken note of in good part, and 
by most even thankfully. I read a Press article 
not long ago — it was, if I remember rightly, a 
review of Mr. Llew Williams's book, Armenia 
Past and Present in The Court Journal— which 
ended with the following question: "If these ter- 
rible things are true and we have any responsi- 
bility, why are we not told so?" 

As regards the nature of the responsibilities 
and obligations, I refer my readers to the Ap- 
pendix, where will be found the texts of Art. 61 
of the Treaty of Berlin, Art. 18 of the Treaty of 
San Stefano — which was torn up and superseded 
by the Treaty of Berlin — the full text of the 
Cyprus Convention, and Lord Salisbury's Dis- 
patch to Sir Henry Layard containing instruc- 
tions for the negotiation of that Convention. 

I may here point out that though at first sight 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 149 

there appears to be little difference between the 
wording of Art. 16 of the Treaty of San Stefano 
and Art. 61 of the Treaty of Berlin, there is this 
fundamental difference between the application 
of the two clauses that, while the former left the 
Russian Army in occupation of the Armenian 
provinces until the reforms should be an accom- 
plished fact, the latter was a mere Turkish prom- 
ise to be performed after their evacuation by the 
Russian forces. How the Turk performed his 
promise is well enough known, and forms the 
darkest page of modern history — probably of all 
history. 

Those who have the interest and the time for 
fuller information on the subject I recommend 
to refer to Mr. Gladstone's famous speeches on 
the Eastern Question and the Treaty of Berhn, 
the debates in both Houses of Parliament on the 
massacres of 1895-96, Canon Maccoll's ''The Sul- 
tan and the Powers," Mr. W. Llew Williams's 
"Armenia Past and Present," and last but not 
least, "Our Responsibilities for Turkey," by the 
late Duke of Argyll. This frank and admirable 
commentary on the bearing of British policy upon 
the Armenian question is now unfortunately out 
of print. I therefore quote, with apologies, the 
following lengthy extract for the convenience of 
those who may have difficulty in procuring a 



150 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

copy. It is an authority that will command gen- 
eral and respectful attention/ (The italics are 
mine.) 

"Nothing can be more childish than to suppose 
that the significance and effect of such a change 
as this^ can be measured or appreciated by look- 
ing at the mere grammatical meaning of the 
words. The words seemed harmless enough. 
They may even seem to be most benevolent and 
most wise in the interests of the Christian sub- 
jects of the Porte in Armenia. But when we 
look at the facts which lay behind the words, and 
at the motives which were at work among the 
contracting parties, we must see that nothing 
could have been devised more fatal to their inter- 
ests. The change which the new words aiFected 
in the Treaty of San Stefano wounded the pride 
and the most justifiable ambition of Russia to be 
the protector of her co-religionists in provinces 
with which no other Christian Power had any 
natural connection. On the other hand, it de- 
lighted the low cunning of the Turk, in consti- 
tuting another 'rift within the lute' which by 
and by would be quite sure to make the 'music 

^ Our Responsibilities for Turkey, by the Duke of Ar- 
gyll, K.G., K.T., John Murray, 1896, p. 72. 

^ The supersession of Article 16 of the Treaty of San 
Stefano by Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 151 

mute' of any effective concert between the Pow- 
ers of Europe. The Turk could see at a glance 
that, whilst it relieved him of the dangerous 
pressure of Russia, it substituted no other pres- 
sure which his own infinite dexterity in delays 
could not easily make abortive. As for the unfor- 
tunate Armenians J, the change was simply one 
which must tend to expose them to the increased 
enmity of their tyrants, whilst it damaged and 
discouraged the only protection which was pos- 
sible umder the inexorable conditions of the phys- 
ical geography of the country.^ 

*'But this is not the whole of the responsi- 
bility which falls on us out of the international 
transactions connected with the Treaty of Berlin. 
After that treaty had been concluded, we entered 

^ Town Topics of February 10, 1917, had the following: 
"The idiotic and ignorant criticism of the Navy one hears 
occasionally, recalls an immortal answer by a harassed 
First Lord, during an earlier Armenian atrocity (1895- 

" 'Will the right honourable gentleman tell the House 
definitely whether it is proposed to send a British battle- 
ship to Armenia?' asked the bore who worried about every 
country but his own. 

" 'It is not proposed to send any ships there,' replied 
the Minister gravely. 'Navigation, I am informed by 
expert advisers at the Admiralty, has not been good in the 
vicinity of Ararat since the cruise of the Ark.' " 

Would to God that this intelligence had reached the 
Foreign Offices of Europe twenty years earlier, before the 
signing of the Treaty of Berlin. 



152 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

by ourselves into a separate, and for a while a 
secret, convention with Turkey, by which we 
undertook to defend her Asiatic provinces by 
force of arms from any further conquests on the 
part of Russia, and in return we asked for noth- 
ing more than a lease of Cyprus, and a new crop 
of Turkish promises that she would introduce 
reforms in her administration of Armenia. No 
security whatever was asked or offered for the 
execution of those promises. We simply re- 
peated the old mistake of 1856, of trusting en- 
tirely to the good faith of Turkey, or to her grati- 
tude. But this time the mistake was repeated 
after twenty- two years' continued experience of 
the futility of such a trust. As to gratitude, it 
must have been quite clear to the Turks that we 
were acting in our own supposed interests in 
resisting the advance of Russia at any cost. 

"No doubt we had occasion to remember, with 
some natural bitterness, the sacrifice to Russia 
of all that the gallant General Williams had done 
for Turkey in his splendid defence of Kars. But 
we ought to have remembered, also, how dreadful 
had been the account given by that able and gal- 
lant man of the detestable Government which he 
was defending. We ought to have remembered 
how easy were the reforms which he had recom- • 
mended, if the Turkish Government had been 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 153 

honest ; and how they had all been systematically 
evaded. We ought, above all, to have considered 
the inevitable effect of this new treaty of guar- 
antee upon the sharp cunning of the Turks. 
They saw how eagerly it was sought by us, and 
they must have concluded that, whilst we were 
clearly not only earnest, but excited, in our oppo- 
sition to Russia, we were comparatively careless 
and lukewarm about any changes in their own 
system of government. They must have seen 
that the new convention ^ practically superseded 
even the slightest restraints put upon them by 
the Treaty of Berlin^ and that the Christian pop- 
ulation of Armenia were practically left entirely 
at their mercy, 

"Let us look back upon all these transactions 
as a whole, and try to form some estimate of the 
position of responsibility in which they have 
placed us towards the Christian populations sub- 
ject to the Ottoman dominion. In 1854-56 we 
had saved that dominion from destruction by 
defeating, and locally disarming, its great natural 
enemy. We had set up that dominion with new 
immunities from attack, and we had choked off 
from any protectorate over the Christians the 
only Power which would or could exert any such 
influence with effect. We had done this without 

^ The Cyprus Convention. 



154 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

providing any substitute of our own, except a 
recorded promise from the Turks. We had pro- 
vided no machinery whereby bad faith on the 
part of Turkey could be proved and punished. 
Then, twenty years later, in 1876, we had obsti- 
nately refused to join the other Powers of Eu- 
rope in remedying this great defect, by putting 
a combined pressure on Turkey to compel her 
to establish effective guarantee for the future. In 
1878 we had denounced the treaty in which Rus- 
sia, by her own expenditure of blood and treas- 
ure, had imposed on Turkey the obligations which 
we had admitted to be needful, but which we had 
ourselves declined to do anything to enforce. 
Then, in the same year, at Berlin, we had again 
done all we could to choke off the only Power 
which had the means and the disposition to secure 
the fulfilment of any promises at all. Particu- 
larly in Armenia we had snhstituted for a prom- 
ise to Russia which her power, her geographical 
position, and her pride might have really led her 
to enforce, another promise to all the Powers 
which, on the face of it, was absurd — namely, a 
promise to let all the Powers 'superintend the 
eooecution' of domestic reforms in a remote and 
very inaccessible country. Lastly, in the same 
year, as we had already choked off Russia, we 
now proeeerled by a separate Convention to choke 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 165 

off also all the other Powers collectively, by in- 
ducing Turkey to give a special promise to our- 
selves, apart from them altogether. For the 
performance of this special promise we provided 
no security whatever, but trusted entirely, as we 
had done in 1856, to the good faith of a Power 
which we knew had none. With Russia deeply 
offended and estranged, and the rest of Europe 
set aside or superseded — such were the conditions 
under which we abandoned the Christian subjects 
of the Porte in Asia to a Government incurably 
barbarous and corrupt, 

"And now, we are astonished and disgusted 
by finding that the terrible consequences of all 
this selfish folly have fallen on those whom we 
had professed, and whom we were bound by every 
consideration of honour, to protect. Surely these 
years might have brought us a reconsideration of 
our position. The fever of our popular Russo- 
phobia had sensibly abated. We had secured our 
^scientific frontier' in India, and Russian expan- 
sion had taken a new direction in the Far East. 
New combinations — and some new disseverments 
— had taken place in Europe. The whole posi- 
tion of affairs was favourable to a policy of es- 
cape from bad traditions — from obsolete doc- 
trines — and from duties which it was impossible 
we could discharge. Surely we might have asked 



156 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

ourselves, What had we been doing all these 
years to fulfil those duties? Nothing. And yet 
all along we were not ignorant that the vicious 
Government which we had so long helped to 
sustain against all the natural agencies that 
would have brought it to an end long ago was 
getting no better, but rather worse. We knew 
this perfectly well, and we have recorded our 
knowledge of it in a document of unimpeachable 
authority. In the second year after the Treaty 
of Berlin, when the obligations we had under- 
taken under it were still fresh in our recollection, 
we had made one more endeavour to recall the 
Ottoman Power to some sense of shame, if not 
to some sense of duty. In 1880 we had a special 
Envoy at the Porte, one of our most distin- 
guished public men — ^Mr. Goschen; and we had 
called together at Constantinople a meeting of 
all the Ambassadors of the six Powers of Eu- 
rope who were signatories of the Treaty of Ber- 
lin. They drew up an Identic Note, which they 
all signed and presented to the Porte. In that 
Note they declared that no reforms had been, or 
were even on the way to being, adopted, and that 
so desperate was the misgovernment of the coun- 
try, that *it would lead in all probability to the 
destruction of the Christian population of vast 
districts.' Could a more dreadful confession have 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 157 

been made in respect to the conduct and policy 
of any Christian Government? 

*'This Identic Note commented severely on the 
calculated falsehoods of all kinds, and on the cun- 
ning procrastinations, which characterized the 
conduct and language of the Porte. It con- 
cluded by reminding that Government, as an 
essential fact, 'that by treaty engagements Tur- 
key was bound to introduce the reforms which 
had been often indicated,' and that these reforms 
were to be 'carried out under the supervision of 
the Powers.' 

*'We might as well have addressed our repre- 
sentations to a convict just released from a long 
sentence, and determined at once to renew his 
career of crime. And so we had gone on for 
fifteen more years since 1880, failing to take, or 
even attempt taking, any effectual measures to 
protect the helpless populations subject to a 
Government which we knew to be so cruel and 
oppressive — populations towards whom we lay 
under so many responsibilities, from our persis- 
tent protection of their oppressors. At last 
comes, in 1894, one of those appalling outbreaks 
of brutality on the part of the Turks which al- 
ways horrify, but need never astonish, the world. 
They are all according to what Bishop Butler 
would have called the 'natural constitution and 



158 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

course of things,' that is to say, they are the nat- 
ural results of the nature and government of 
the Ottoman Turks." 

Such is the nature of Great Britain's debt to 
us. It was rashly incurred by her statesmen. 
Successive British Governments have made stren- 
uous efforts and run great risks to discharge it. 
But it has proved undischargeable for forty 
years, with consequences to us which are well 
known. This terrible war and the ensuing peace 
will give Great Britain both the power and the 
opportunity to discharge that obligation, and our 
weapons for enforcing our claim are the honour, 
the conscience and the never-failing sense of jus- 
tice of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and 
the British Empire. I appeal to these in the 
name of my sorely-stricken nation, pale, pros- 
trate and bleeding almost to death, to stand by 
us and fight our battle at the Peace Conference. 
And if my appeal reaches a wide enough circle 
of British and Irish men and women, I am con- 
fident that my nation will not die, but will live 
and prosper, and carve out a future that will 
amply compensate her for the past. 



XI 



AN APPEAL TO THE COMING PEACE CONFERENCE 

GENTLEMEN, this historic conference has 
come together to draw up a map of a new 
Europe and a new Near East which will in no 
part violate the principle of nationality — the 
great weakness and inherent injustice of former 
treaties, which has been largely responsible for 
the disastrous war now happily come to an end. 

You have also assembled as a great interna- 
tional tribunal to uphold the sanctity of law and 
humanity, and to give judgment as to the just 
reparation that must be made, and as to the pen- 
alties to be exacted for all outrages committed 
during the war against humanity and the laws 
and usages of civilized warfare. 

Among the multitude of problems, great and 
small, that await a just and wise settlement at 
your hands, there is also the Armenian question. 

This question may appear, to some of you at 
least, a small and insignificant one in the presence 
of the great and weighty questions of world-wide 
importance that await settlement. I claim for it 

159 



160 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

without any fear of contradiction that in point of 
outraged humanity and civilization, measured by 
the sacrifice of innocence, the magnitude and un- 
speakable horrors of the martyrdom, destruction 
and ruin that has been brought upon this people 
with a calculated, deliberate object, and without 
the slightest provocation; I maintain that, on 
these incontestable grounds, this is the greatest 
Wrong that ever demanded justice and repara- 
tion at the bar of a great International Tribunal. 

And it is not Turkey and Germany alone who 
owe us reparation, although upon their shoulders 
lies the guilt for the innocent blood that has been 
ruthlessly shed, the wanton destruction that has 
been wrought and the untold suffering and sor- 
row brought upon this people during the war. 
All the Great Powers of Europe have their share 
of responsibility for leaving them at the mercy 
of the Turk to be murdered, burned, outraged, 
enslaved, to provide this or that European States- 
man the satisfaction of having scored a point 
against his opponent in the sordid jealousies and 
rivalries of conflicting interests. 

In 1877 Russian armies, partly under Arme- 
nian generals, occupied our country, and we 
hoped and believed that the hour of our liberation 
from the hideous nightmare of Turkish domina- 
tion had struck. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 161 

It was a short-lived joy. The Congress of 
Berlin assembled soon after, tore up the Treaty 
of San Stefano which had given us the blessing 
of effective Russian protection, compelled the 
liberating Russian armies to evacuate our coun- 
try, and left us once again the sport and prey of 
our Turkish and Kurdish tormentors. 

After the butcheries of 1895-96 Great Britain 
was prepared to exact effective guarantees from 
the Sultan Abdul Hamid, if necessary by force 
of arms, against a repetition of these unspeakable 
barbarities; but the Russian Government of the 
day, sore at the rebuff administered to it by the 
Treaty of Berlin and the Cyprus Convention, 
opposed Great Britain's proposal of taking co- 
ercive measures to stay the hand of the Great 
Assassin. 

In 1913 a Scheme of Reforms proposed by 
Russia formed the subject of discussion by the 
Powers, and was finally agreed to by Turkey 
after it had undergone such modifications and 
revisions at the instance of the Turks, backed by 
Germany, as to render it of little practical value. 
The war intervened before the scheme could be 
put into operation, and it remained a dead letter, 
as had all its predecessors. Meanwhile massacre, 
outrage, rapine, plunder, and all conceivable 
forms of oppression and persecution went on 



162 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

without respite, though in varying degrees of 
intensity, culminating in the frightful hecatombs 
of the last two years. 

Although, of course, such was not their object 
and intention, the net result of these transactions 
was to give the Turk the opportunity, as events 
have unfortunately proved, of murdering, burn- 
ing, drowning, torturing, violating, enslaving and 
forcibly converting to Islam at least 2,000,000 
unoffending and defenceless Christians within 
the comparatively short space of forty years. I 
do not for a moment suggest that the authors of 
these Treaties themselves foresaw such a result 
of their efforts. But that makes no difference 
to the result. Europe backed "the wrong horse," 
as Lord Salisbury had the courage to say, and the 
stakes were the lives of hundreds of thousands 
of innocent Christians — ^men, women and chil- 
dren — and a sum of human suffering and misery 
such as the world has probably never seen before. 

I gratefully acknowledge the efforts made by 
the successive British, French, Russian and Ital- 
ian Governments, from time to time, to bring 
moral or diplomatic pressure upon the Turks to 
treat us with less harshness and inhumanity. But 
the Turk, Young and Old, knew that coercion 
would never be used against him. He treated all 
European representations with amusement and 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 163 

contempt and went his way relentlessly, intent 
upon wiping out the whole race. He felt more 
secure from the danger of coercion after the 
Christian Emperor William II, on his return 
from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, paid a 
visit to and fraternized with the Sultan Abdul 
Hamid while his hands were still red with the 
blood of the fearful massacres of 1895-96. 

That, gentlemen, has been the net result of the 
solemn promises given by the Turks in the Treaty 
of Berlin, for which every Signatory Power has 
its share of responsibility. Since that Treaty 
became the law of Europe we have made numer- 
ous appeals and representations for the appli- 
cation of Art. 61. The reply we received from 
the Ministers of the Signatory Powers was al- 
most the same every time and everywhere. "In- 
sistence on the application of Art. 61 will lead to 
complications; you must wait for a favourable 
opportunity." 

Gentlemen, that long-looked-for opportunity 
has at last come. Armenia — "the little blood that 
is left to her" — stands at the bar of this Confer- 
ence, full of hope and expectation that the En- 
tente Powers will compel Turkey in the first 
place to make full reparation for the untold hor- 
rors, outrages and injustices that she has inflicted 
upon her ; that they will compel Germany to com- 



164 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

pensate her for her acquiescence in the atrocities 
committed by the Turks while Turkey was under 
her influence and control ; and that they will add 
their own quota as a debt of honour and con- 
science in return for a part at least of what she 
has had to endure as a result of the diplomatic 
transactions cited above, for which they have 
their share of responsibility. You cannot give 
us back our dead, but this Conference gives you 
the opportunity of exacting and making a repa- 
ration as generous as our trials and sacrifices 
have been heavy. 

**What do you expect this Conference to give 
the Armenian people as their adequate repara- 
tion and just rights?" I would probably be asked. 

This is what I should expect the Conference 
to give to my nation, in all justice and equity: 

The formation of an autonomous Armenia, 
comprising the vilayets of Van, Bitlis, Erzeroum, 
Kharput, Diyarbekir, and Eastern Sivas, also 
Cilicia with an outlet on the Gulf of Alexan- 
dretta, say from the port of Alexandretta to a 
few miles south-west of Mersina. 

This State to be an internationally guaranteed 
neutral State with its ports and markets open to 
all nations. It would have an Organic Statute 
drawn up for it by the Protecting Powers, Eng- 
land, France, and Russia, giving equality before 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 165 

the law to all the dilFerent elements of the popu- 
lation with extra-territorial rights and consular 
courts for Europeans for a term of years. Russia 
to act as mandatory of the Protecting Powers, 
and during the first few years the executive to 
consist of a Governor- General or High Commis- 
sioner and a mixed Legislative Council appointed 
by the Protecting Powers. A Legislative As- 
sembly to be called together as soon as the coun- 
try regains its normal state. 

The country being at present in a more or less 
chaotic state, an army of occupation will be nec- 
essary for as many years as will be required to 
organize and train an efficient gendarmerie from 
the local population. European advisers and 
heads of departments would be necessary, but 
there are large numbers of experienced Armenian 
administrators, magistrates, post and telegraph 
inspectors, engineers, etc., etc., in the Ottoman 
Empire as well as in the Caucasus, Egypt and 
the Balkans, who would gladly put their services 
at the disposal of their own country. Some would 
probably come from America, India and else- 
where. Adequate financial compensation by 
Turkey^ and Germany would place at the dis- 
posal of the executive ample funds to begin the 

^ A friend of mine, a Turkish Armenian well acquainted 
with local conditions, told me that .£50,000,000 would be a 



166 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

work of rebuilding the ruined towns and villages 
and reconstruction generally, and to carry on 
the Government of the country until the first 
year's harvest is sown and gathered and revenue 
begins coming into the Treasury. 

This is the scheme I would propose in broad 
outline, it being impossible to go into details here. 

"But there is not a large enough number of 
Armenians left to form a State," I may be told, 
as I have been told so often recently. (I may 
say here, in parenthesis, that the Turkish and 
German delegates cannot advance this objection, 
as their Governments have denied the existence 
of any massacres.) 

That is an entirely mistaken assumption, cre- 
ated by the frequent but inaccurate use of the 
phrase "Armenian extermination." The Turks 
did make a final ruthless attempt to exterminate 
us, and have dealt us a staggering blow as a 
race; but, gentlemen, they have not quite suc- 
ceeded in their nefarious design, and it would be 
a sad day, indeed, for civilization if such a design 
had succeeded. 

There are to-day 500,000 Turkish Armenians 
in the parts of vilayets in occupation of the Rus- 

conservative estimate of the material loss of the 1,200^000 
massacred, deported, enslaved, but in all cases despoiled, 
Armenians. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 167 

sian armies, in the Caucasus and Northern Per- 
sia. Far from their spirits being broken, these 
people are animated with the unshakable deter- 
mination that their beloved country shall rise 
again from its ashes and their nation revive and 
enter upon a new era of security and free devel- 
opment. Armenians all over the world are ani- 
mated with the same spirit and determination. 
Of the above half -million 50,000 or 60,000, mostly 
able-bodied men, are in different parts of the 
occupied provinces. There are a little over 250,- 
000 refugees in the Caucasus and Persia, and 
some 200,000 emigrants and refugees from pre- 
war massacres ; most of them are ready to return 
to their homes, one potent reason for the readi- 
ness of the pre-war emigrants to return being 
the growing scarcity and dearness of land in the 
fertile parts of the Caucasus. Then there are the 
hundreds of thousands of Armenians in concen- 
tration camps in Northern Mesopotamia and 
Syria. How many are alive to return to their 
devastated homes, I cannot say. Perhaps the 
Turkish delegate will be able to inform the Con- 
ference on that point. Then there are still large 
numbers of Armenians — though mostly old men, 
women and children, so far as our information 
goes — in Anatolia and Thrace, and over 200,000 
mostly young, intelhgent, ambitious men, who 



168 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

have emigrated since the beginning of Abdul 
Hamid's reign of terror, to the United States, 
Egypt, the Balkans, and different other coun- 
tries. A not unimportant number of these will 
return to their native land ready to "do their bit" 
in the — to them — sacred work of its reconstruc- 
tion and regeneration with invincible industry. 

This will give us within a very short time an 
Armenian population of not much under one 
million souls in the proposed Autonomous Arme- 
nia. It may not form a majority taken as a 
whole, but it will form the largest coherent ethno- 
logical element. In many important centres, 
such as Van, Alashgerd, etc., where there are 
almost no Turks left and a much smaller number^ 
of Kurds than there was before the war, it will 
form an absolute majority. This is an impor- 
tant fact which the Conference should bear in 
mind. Although the Armenian element is sadly 
reduced in numbers, the great majority of the 
Turkish and kindred elements in these occupied 
provinces have, as is their wont, followed the re- 
treating Turkish armies and will probably never 
return. On the other hand, Armenians have for 
some time past and do still percolate through the 
Turkish lines in groups of various sizes and gain 
the Russian lines. This movement of popula- 
tion will almost certainly continue for some years, 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 169 

tending to increase the Armenian and reduce 
the Turkish element in the proposed Armenian 
State, if such a State is set up. Similar move- 
ments of populations have always taken place 
whenever any piece of Turkish territory has 
passed under Christian rule. 

I may also remind the Congress that when 
Greece achieved her independence, the popula- 
tion of Greece proper did not exceed 400,000. 

Another important point bearing on this ques- 
tion of population is the fact, to which most stu- 
dents of Near Eastern affairs have borne witness, 
that the Armenian race is endowed with extraor- 
dinary powers of recuperation, is almost entirely 
free from the diseases that impede the rapid 
growth of population, and is one of the most pro- 
lific races in the world. Their neighbours, on the 
evidence of travellers and students, are less free 
from disease and, in spite of polygamy, or per- 
haps partly because of it, are much less prolific 

But apart from mere counting of heads, it is, 
I believe, generally known and admitted that 
there is a vast difference between the moral, in- 
tellectual, economic, and industrial value of the 
Armenian population as compared with most of 
its neighbours, the Armenians being markedly 
superior in every field of human activity. They 
have proved this even under the most trying han- 



170 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

dicaps, and when they have had a fair field they 
have easily proved themselves the equals of Euro- 
peans. In fact, the Armenian mind is much more 
European than Asiatic.^ 

Lord Cromer has said that "the Armenians 
with the Syrians, are the intellectual cream of 
Near Eastern peoples." 

But apart from all these practical and certainly 
essential and vital considerations there remains, 
messieurs, the moral argument which, I feel quite 
certain, this august Conference, representing the 
will and the conscience of Europe, is not minded 
to ignore. 

After the massacres and deportations of 1915 
Talaat Bey is reported to have said: "I have 
killed the idea of Armenian autonomy for at 
least fifty years." Whether he said it or not, 
that was clearly the object — to kill the Armenian 
question by wiping out the Armenian race, and 
incidentally to destroy the roots of Christianity 
in Asia Minor. 

Is this Conference going to condone and jus- 
tify the barbarous and revolting practice, as a 
State policy, of the deliberate attempt to murder 

^ M. J. de Morgan says in an article in La Revue de 
Paris (May 1, I916): "Les Armeniens sont des Orien- 
taux par leur habitat seulement, mais des Europeens par 
leurs origins, leur parler, leur religion, leurs moeurs et 
leurs aptitudes." 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 171 

a whole nation in cold blood, by permitting that 
infamous policy to succeed in its object? 

Is it conceivable that this historic Conference 
can bring itself to decree that the myriads of our 
brothers and sisters who have fallen victims to 
the super-tyrants' fury, for their religion and 
their nation, as well as those who have fallen in 
the common struggle for Right, have suffered 
and died in vain? 

In the name not only of the living, but also of 
the dead, I appeal to you; I appeal to the heart 
and conscience of Europe to desist from enacting 
such a flagrant and cruel injustice. 

M. Paul Doumer, late President of the French 
Senate, declared in Paris not long ago, with a 
fine sense of French chivalry and outraged hu- 
manity, that when the question of Armenian 
population came to be considered at the end of 
the war, the dead must be counted with the living. 
Who but my martyred nation has the moral right 
to invoke the memorable and exalted words of 
the French officer who, at a moment of dire straits 
for men, looked at his fallen heroes around him 
and exclaimed ''Debout les morts!"? 

I appeal to you, in particular, great and noble- 
hearted Russia, our mighty neighbour and pro- 
tector. Our destiny is indissolubly bound up with 
yours. Without the protection of your mighty 



172 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

sword and your most generous grants to our 
refugees, the Turk would have succeeded in his 
sinister design. We will remain ever grateful 
to you, and loyal to the death. We have always 
proved our unswerving loyalty to you in your 
hour of peril. We in our turn have rendered 
services which have been of value to you. Your 
generals gave our men great praise. Your fore- 
most newspapers hailed our soldiers and volun- 
teers, and with truth, as the saviours of the Cau- 
casus. Your great Statesmen and Ministers de- 
clared in the Duma that our terrible sufferings 
were chiefly due to our loyalty to Russia. Have 
trust in us. Help us to stand on our feet again 
and rebuild our devastated homes. Leave us 
freedom to develop and progress according to 
our own national genius. Some of your news- 
papers are speaking of a scheme to plant Russian 
colonies in Armenia, "to create a dividing zone 
between the Russian and Turkish Armenians."^ 

'^ The Retch, the organ of the Constitutional Democrats 
in Russia, has published the following in its issue of July 
28, 1916 (O.S.)— 

"The scheme of settling Russian emigrants in the occu- 
pied parts of Turkish Armenia, recently discussed in the 
Duma, is being energetically carried out. This matter 
has been the subject of a lively discussion between the 
Emigration and Military authorities. Investigations are 
in progress, not only in the districts near the frontier, but 
also further afield, the fertile Mush valley being the ob- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 173 

If this is true, it is an injustice. I am speaking 
candidly as a friend of Russia, and a supporter 

ject of special attention. Agricultural battalions have 
been in course of organization since last autumn and al- 
ready number 5000 men. More will be found presently. 
Armenians and Georgians are excluded. The task of these 
young arms is to cultivate the fields on which investigations 
have been carried out, under the supervision of agricultural 
experts, in order to facilitate the provisioning of the army. 
The question of emigrating the families of these men is 
also under consideration. 

"Side by side with this scheme there exists another 
scheme of settling Cossacks in Turkish Armenia, on sim- 
ilar lines to what has already been done in Northern Cau- 
casus with good results. Those who have conceived these 
schemes have in view the creation of a sufficiently broad 
zone inhabited by Russians, separating the Russian Ar- 
menians from the Turkish Armenians. 

"Armenian refugees are gradually returning to their 
country and resuming the work of cultivating their 
lands. They usually settle in the villages that have 
suffered least, their own villages having been totally 
ruined. 

"To avoid confusion, the Grand Duke Nicholas issued 
a Ukase in March last, warning these returned refugees 
to keep themselves in readiness to vacate these districts 
on the establishment of Russian Civil Administration. In 
the same Ukase the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian 
Army has decreed that the vacant lands in the plains of 
Alashkert, Diadin and Bayazid may be given in hire up 
to the time of the return of their rightful owners. General 
Yudenitch has issued orders, however, prohibiting the 
settlement in these places of any other immigrants except 
Russians and Cossacks. Only those natives are permitted 
to return who are able to prove ownership of land or 
property by legal documents. This arrangement makes 
it impossible for the natives (Armenians) to return to 



174 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

of my nationality as my birthright. Russians 
will always be welcome amongst us. To show 
our feelings towards you I may mention the fact 
that in conversation between themselves Arme- 
nians do not speak of you as "Russians'* but as 
"keri," which means "uncle." But it is mani- 
festly unfair to establish colonies and apportion 
lands before the repatriation of our numerous 
refugees, some of whom may be the owners of 
the land given away. Besides, what is the object 
or the necessity of a "dividing zone" between the 
Turkish and Russian Armenians? We are all 
ready to rally to your support again if the need 
should arise, as we have always done in your 
righteous struggle against barbarism. Such 
measures, before the blood of our numerous vic- 
tims is dry on our land, grieve and perplex us. 
I say again, we welcome your protection, but 
enable us to say always, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier 
said of the French Canadians, "We are loyal be- 
cause we are free." With such just and liberal 



their homes because it is ridiculous to speak of title-deeds, 
when dealing with land in Turkey; and as for other docu- 
ments which prove ownership, these always get lost during 
flight. 

"In the above three plains, also in parts of the plain 
of Bassain, the surviving native inhabitants are debarred 
from returning to their homes and resuming their peace- 
ful occupations." 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 175 

treatment from you, we will not only create in 
a short time important markets for your trade 
down to the shores of the Mediterranean, but you 
will have in us a reliable bulwark and counter- 
poise, on your southern frontier, against the tur- 
bulent elements who are a standing menace to 
that frontier. The stronger you help us to grow, 
the more secure that frontier of your empire 
will be. 

To England, France and Italy I appeal jointly 
with Russia, to prevent the Congress from finally 
condemning to death our long-cherished and le- 
gitimate aspirations of national regeneration, for 
which we have paid such a fearful price. In par- 
ticular I appeal to you to give us an outlet to 
the sea, not only as an indispensable necessity 
of our economic life and development, but also 
as the avenue of Western Culture which a hard 
and cruel fate has so long withheld from us. 

Let the radiant sun of liberty and security 
shine again on our land of sorrow and drive away 
for ever the stifling miasma of the Turkish blight, 
and there will spring to life, within a generation, 
a people with a passionate craving for the light 
and progress of the West — a people morally and 
mentally equipped and adapted for the assimila- 
tion of the New Dispensation not only for its own 



176 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

benefit, but also for its dissemination amongst its 
less advanced neighbours — a well-qualified and 
willing instrument and leaven of Christian civili- 
zation. 



POSTSCRIPT 

SINCE the foregoing pages were written and 
before they had left the printer's hands, two 
momentous events have occurred which must pro- 
foundly influence not only the remaining course 
of the war, but also, and more especially, the set- 
tlement of the peace on its termination: two 
events that together mark the greatest triumph 
of democracy and civilization the world has seen. 
The Russian revolution and the entry of the 
great American Republic into the ranks of the 
champions of Right and Humanity have not only 
brought peace nearer, they have banished any 
doubt that may have existed in the minds of scep- 
tics both in belligerent and neutral countries that 
this war of wars is a struggle between the forces 
of Light and Liberty and the powers of Dark- 
ness and Reaction. 

After watching the course of the struggle for 
more than thirty months, taking note of the 
diif erence between the methods of warfare em- 
ployed by the opposing groups of belligerents; 
after ascertaining their respective aims; after 

177 



178 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

long, patient and careful deliberation, the great- 
est of all the neutral judges came to the conclu- 
sion that "civilization itself seems to be in the 
balance." (It will not be forgotten in the En- 
tente countries, I feel sure, that though unlimited 
submarine "f rightfulness" was the inmaediate 
casus bellij the martyrdom of Armenia played an 
important part in leading President Wilson and 
the people of the United States to that conclu- 
sion. ) The world's greatest Democracy, imbued 
with a deep-rooted love of peace and abhorrence 
of war as to which no doubt or suspicion any- 
where exists, has broken away from a century- 
old tradition, which was the very foundation of 
its external policy, and drawn the sword impelled 
not by ambition or the furtherance of material 
interests of any kind, but by honour and the 
instinctive call of true chivalry to stand by those 
who have carried on a long and fierce struggle 
to save the "desperately assaulted" free institu- 
tions, principles and ideals which are its own and 
humanity's most precious and sacred possessions. 
For the first time in history — I think one can 
safely say that — a great nation, led by a great 
and sagacious leader, has gone to war prompted 
almost entirely with the disinterested motive of 
upholding its own ideals and the ideals and rights 
of humanity — truly an event of which the best 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 179 

elements of the human race will always be proud ; 
which will ever stand out as a bright and noble 
landmark in the history of the world. 

While these epoch-making events have stamped 
the cause of the Allies with the seal of supreme 
moral sanction, they have also made assurance 
doubly sure that the end of the war will confer 
upon the world a lasting peace based upon real 
justice and equity. The presence of the dele- 
gates of the United States at the Peace Confer- 
ence side by side with the representatives of the 
British Empire, France, Italy, and free Russia 
will constitute a sure and sterling guarantee to 
the world that the determining factors in the 
moulding of its destinies will not be the selfish 
interests, avowed or veiled, of this or that empire, 
not the whims and ambitions of despots and rul- 
ing castes or the greed of cosmopolitan financiers, 
but "the pure milk," of the broad interests of 
justice and peace, the rights of nations great and 
small and the freedom and welfare of mankind 
itself. 

To the Armenian people it is a final pledge 
that the reparation to be demanded and obtained 
for them, in the terms of peace will be commen- 
surate, in full measure, with the magnitude of the 
wrongs and sufferings inflicted upon them be- 
cause, in a vast waste of ancient barbarism and 



180 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

fraud, they formed an oasis embodying the ideals 
and principles which the democracies of Europe 
and America are struggling to vindicate. 

If the great and free nations of Europe have 
greeted these auspicious events with the satisfac- 
tion and enthusiasm we have witnessed in these 
last days, it can be readily imagined how intense 
is the rejoicing they have evoked in the hearts of 
the most ruthlessly oppressed of all peoples, so 
long denied the blessings whose advent has been 
placed beyond all doubt by President Wilson's 
clarion call to Democracy and by the declarations 
of the Provisional Government of free Russia. 

That the declarations of the Provisional Gov- 
ernment of free and regenerated Russia have 
been received with profound satisfaction by Ar- 
menians, goes without saying. These declara- 
tions added to those already made by the Allied 
Governments in regard to their war-aims, and 
President Wilson's "Declaration of Liberty" — 
as his inspiring and memorable address to Con- 
gress has been rightly called — finally ensure the 
realization of Armenia's legitimate aspiration to 
freedom and self-government. And if the Rus- 
sian people should decide that the new Russia 
shall be a Republic, that would open out the vista 
of a thoroughly democratic, integral and united 
Armenian State free to work out her regenera- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 181 

tion according to her own national genius, under 
the guidance of the Protecting Powers and with 
their and America's generous moral and material 
support. 

America's interest in Armenia and the excel- 
lent w^ork of her Missions in numerous Armenian 
centres both in Armenia itself and throughout 
Asia Minor leave no doubt that when the time 
for reconstruction comes, American aid — moral, 
material and cultural — will be forthcoming on a 
scale and in a manner worthy of that great coun- 
try and the lofty aims for which she entered the 
war. For, what part of the vast war-stricken 
area in Europe and the Near East more acutely 
and tragically exemplifies the evils which the 
Allies and the United States are determined to 
put an end to once and for all, and what nobler 
and more fitting culmination to their gigantic 
efforts and sacrifices for humanity, than the re- 
demption and re-birth of this thrice-martyred 
ancient Christian people? 

Before concluding, I take this opportunity to 
call attention to a passage in Mr. Asquith's 
speech in the House of Commons on the entry 
of the United States into the war, w^hich brings 
into strong relief the guilt of the Governments 
of the Central Powers in the stupendous crime 
of attempting the murder of a nation, although 



182 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the occasion of the speech was of course the very 
antithesis of the attitude of the Central Powers 
towards the Armenian atrocities. 

"In such a situation," said Mr. Asquith, "aloof- 
ness is seen to be not only a blunder but a crime. 
To stand aside with stopped ears, with folded 
arms, with an averted gaze, when you have the 
power to intervene is to become not a mere spec- 
tator, but an accomplice."^ 

I am quoting this striking utterance by one of 
England's greatest living statesmen also in the 
hope that it may furnish food for reflection to 
those pro-Turks who have maintained during 
pre-war massacres, and still maintain, with Count 
Reventlow and his followers, that the massacre 
of his Christian subjects by the Turk is his own 
concern, and that nobody has the right or the 
obligation to intervene and create new conditions 
that will eliminate the possibility of its recur- 
rence. 

"^The Times, April 19, 1917. 



APPENDIX 

ARTICLE XVI OF THE TREATY OF 
SAN STEFANO 

As the evacuation by the Russian troops of the terri- 
tory which they occupy in Armenia, and which is to 
be restored to Turkey, might give rise to conflicts and 
comphcations detrimental to the maintenance of good 
relations between the two countries, the Sublime Porte 
engages to carry into effect, without further delay, the 
improvements and reforms demanded by local require- 
ments in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and 
to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians. 



ARTICLE LXI OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 

The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without 
further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded 
by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by 
the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against 
the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make 
known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, 
who will superintend their application. 



THE CYPRUS CONVENTION 

TURKEY No. 36 (1878) 

Correspondence respecting the Convention between 
Great Britain and Turkey, of June 4, 1878. 

Presented to the Houses of Parliament by Command 
of Her Majesty 1878. 

183 



184 APPENDIX 

List of Papers 

No. 1. The Marquis of Salisbury to Mr. Layard, 

May 30, 1878. 
No. 2. Sir A. H. Layard to the Marquis of Salisbury, 

one Inclosure June 5, 1878. 
No. 3. Sir A. H. Layard to the Marquis of Salisbury, 

one Inclosure July 1, 1878. 

No. 1 is the letter which conveys to Mr. Layard 
Lord Salisbury's instructions for entering into the 
Convention (as follows) — 

The Marquis of Salisbury to Mr. Layard. 

Foreign Office, 
May 30, 1878. 

Sir, 

The progress of the confidential negotiations which 
have for some time past been in progress between Her 
Majesty's Government and the Government of Russia 
make it probable that those Articles of the Treaty of 
San Stef ano which concern European Turkey will be 
sufficiently modified to bring them into harmony with 
the interests of the other European Powers, and of 
England in particular. 

There is, however, no such prospect with respect to 
that portion of the Treaty which concerns Turkey in 
Asia. It is sufficiently manifest that, in respect to 
Batoum and the fortresses north of the Araxes, the 
Government of Russia is not prepared to recede from 
the stipulations to which the Porte has been led by the 
events of the war to consent. Her Majesty's Govern- 
inent have consequently been forced to consider the 
effect which these agreements, if they are neither 
annulled nor counteracted, will have upon the future 



APPENDIX 185 

of the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire and 
upon the interests of England, which are closely af- 
fected by the condition of those provinces. 

It is impossible that Her Majesty's Government can 
look upon these changes with indifference. Asiatic 
Turkey contains populations of many different races 
and creeds, possessing no capacity for self-government ^ 
and no aspirations for independence, but owing their 
tranquillity and whatever prospect of political well- 
being they possess entirely to the rule of the Sultan. 
But the Government of the Ottoman Dynasty is that 
of an ancient but still alien conqueror, resting more 
upon actual power than upon the sympathies of com- 
mon nationahty. The defeat which the Turkish arms 
have sustained and the known embarrassments of the 
Government will produce a general belief in its deca- 
dence and an expectation of speedy political change, 
which in the East are more dangerous than actual 
discontent to the stability of a Government. If the 
population of Syria, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia 
see that the Porte has no guarantee for its continued 
existence but its own strength, they will, after the evi- 
dence which recent events have furnished of the frailty 
of that reliance, begin to calculate upon the speedy 
fall of the Ottoman domination, and to turn their eyes 
towards its successor. 

^ By a curious irony of events, at the time these lines were writ- 
ten by the great English statesman, Egj^pt was governed by an 
Armenian Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, while the victorious Rus- 
sian Army in the Caucasus was under the command of the Ar- 
menian General Loris Melikoff, the victor of Kars, who later be- 
came Minister of the Interior and one of the most trusted advisers 
of the Czar Liberator. It is interesting to note that Bgypt had an 
Armenian Prime Minister during the reign of the Khalif Al-Mus- 
tansir (1036-94) by the name of Badr-el-Gamali (probably a varia- 
tion of Bedros Gamalian), "who governed wisely and well for 
twenty years (1073-94)." — See Adrian Fortescue: The Lesser 
Eastern Churches, p. 237. 



186 APPENDIX 

Even if it be certain that Batoum and Ardahan and 
Kars will not become the base from which emissaries 
of intrigue will issue forth, to be in due time followed 
by invading armies, the mere retention of them by 
Russia will exercise a powerful influence in disintegrat- 
ing the Asiatic dominion of the Porte. As a monument 
of feeble defence on the one side, and successful aggres- 
sion on the other, they will be regarded by the Asiatic 
population as foreboding the course of political history 
in the immediate future, and will stimulate, by the 
combined action of hope and fear, devotion to the 
Power which is in the ascendant, and desertion of the 
Power which is thought to be falling into decay. 

It is impossible for Her. Majesty's Government to 
accept, without making an effort to avert it, the effect 
which such a state of feeling would produce upon re- 
gions whose political condition deeply concerns the 
Oriental interests of Great Britain. They do not pro- 
pose to attempt the accomplishment of this object by 
taking military measures for the purpose of replac- 
ing the conquered districts in the possession of the 
Porte. Such an undertaking would be arduous and 
costly, and would involve great calamities, and it would 
not be effective for the object which Her Majesty's 
Government have in view, unless subsequently strength- 
ened by precautions which can be taken almost as ef- 
fectually without incurring the miseries of a prelimi- 
nary war. The only provision which can furnish a 
substantial security for the stability of Ottoman rule 
in Asiatic Turkey, and which would be as essential after 
the reconquest of the Russian annexations as it is now, 
is an engagement on the part of a Power strong enough 
to fulfil it, that any further encroachments by Russia 
upon Turkish territory in Asia will be prevented by 
force of arms. Such an undertaking, if given fully 



APPENDIX 187 

and unreservedly, will prevent the occurrence of the 
contingency which would bring it into operation, and 
will, at the same time, give to the populations of the 
Asiatic provinces the requisite confidence that Turkish 
rule in Asia is not destined to a speedy fall. 

There are, however, two conditions which it would 
be necessary for the Porte to subscribe before England 
could give such assurance. 

Her Majesty's Government intimated to the Porte, 
on the occasion of the Conference at Constantinople, 
that they were not prepared to sanction misgovemment 
and oppression, and it will be requisite, before they can 
enter into any agreement for the defence of the Asiatic 
territories of the Porte in certain eventualities, that 
they should be formally assured of the intention of the 
Porte to introduce the necessary reforms into the gov- 
ernment of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte 
in these regions. It is not desirable to require more 
than an engagement in general terms; for the specific 
measures to be taken could only be defined after a 
more careful inquiry and deliberation than could be 
secured at the present juncture. 

It is not impossible that a careful selection and a 
faithful support of the individual officers to whom 
power is to be entrusted in those countries would be a 
more important element in the improvement of the 
condition of the people than even legislative changes ; 
but the assurances required to give England a right to 
insist on satisfactory arrangements for these purposes 
will be an indispensable part of any agreement to which 
Her Majesty's Government could consent. It will fur- 
ther be necessary, in order to enable Her Majesty's 
Government efficiently to execute the engagements now 
proposed, that they should occupy a position near the 
coast of Asia Minor and Syria. The proximity of 



188 APPENDIX 

British officers, and, if necessary, British troops, will 
be the best security that all the objects of this agree- 
ment shall be attained. The Island of Cyprus appears 
to them to be in all respects the most available for this 
object. Her Majesty's Government do not wish to ask 
the Sultan to alienate territory from his sovereignty or 
to diminish the receipts which now pass into his Treas- 
ury. They will, therefore, propose that, while the ad- 
ministration and occupation of the island shall be as- 
signed to Her Majesty, the territory shall still con- 
tinue to be part of the Ottoman Empire, and that the 
excess of the revenue over the expenditure, whatever 
it at present may be, shall be paid over annually by 
the British Government to the Treasury of the Sultan. 

Inasmuch as the whole of this proposal is due to 
the annexations which Russia has made in Asiatic Tur- 
key, and the consequences which it is apprehended will 
flow therefrom, it must be fully understood that, if 
the cause of the danger should cease, the precautionary 
agreement will cease at the same time. If the Govern- 
ment of Russia should at any time surrender to the 
Porte the territory it has acquired in Asia by the re- 
cent war, the stipulations in the proposed agreements 
will cease to operate, and the island will be immediately 
evacuated. 

I request, therefore, your Excellency to propose to 
the Porte to agree to a Convention to the following 
effect, and I have to convey to you full authority to 
conclude the same on behalf of the Queen and of Her 
Majesty's Government — 

"If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be 
retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at 
any future time by Russia to take possession of any 
further portion of the Asiatic territories of the Sultan, 



APPENDIX 189 

as fixed by the definitive Treaty of Peace, England 
engages to join the Sultan in defending them by force 
of arms. In return, the Sultan promises to England 
to introduce necessary reforms (to be agreed upon 
later between the two Powers) into the government of 
the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these 
territories ; and, in order to enable England to make 
necessary provision for executing her engagement the 
Sultan further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus 
to be occupied and administered by England." 

I am, etc., 

(Signed) Salisbury. 

No. 2 is the Convention itself, as follows — 

Article I 

If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be 
retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made 
at any future time by Russia to take possession of any 
further territories of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan 
in Asia, as fixed by the definitive Treaty of Peace, Eng- 
land engages to join His Imperial Majesty the Sultan 
in defending them by force of arms. 

In return, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan promises 
to England to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed 
upon later by the two Powers, into the government 
and for the protection of the Christian and other sub- 
jects of the Porte in these territories; and in order to 
enable England to make necessary provision for exe- 
cuting her engagement His Imperial Majesty the Sul- 
tan further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus 
to be occupied and administered by England. 

Article II 
The present Convention shall be ratified, and the 
ratifications thereof shall be exchanged, within the 
space of one month, or sooner if possible. 



190 APPENDIX 

In Witness whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries 
have signed the same, and have affixed thereto the 
seal of their arms. 

Done at Constantinople, the fourth day of June, in 
the year One thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight. 

(L.S.) A. H. Layard. 
(L.S.) Safvet. 

No. 3 is the Annex to the above Convention, con- 
sisting of Six Articles, signed at Constantinople on 
July 1, 1878, by A. H. Layard and Safvet respectively. 
The first five Articles deal with the manner in which the 
Island of Cyprus would be governed, whilst under 
British occupation. The final Article, viz. Article VI, 
is as follows — 

"That if Russia restores to Turkey Kars and the 
other Conquests made by her in Armenia during the 
last war, the Island of Cyprus will be evacuated by 
England; and the Convention of June 4, 1878, will 
be at an end." 



NOTE 

(p. 29.) 

"The Turanian movement is not the spasmodic 
effort of a few enthusiasts. It represents a carefully 
matured plan most elaborately studied in its philo- 
sophical and practical aspects, and carried out on a 
vast and ambitious scale. The spirit of its teaching 
has been made to permeate all classes of the purely 
Turkish population, including women; while, in the 
army, it has been taught in the shape of a patriotic 
creed, and the force of military discipline has been 



APPENDIX 191 

laid at the service of its promoters. The movement, 
therefore, no longer expresses the creed of a Hmited 
number of nationalist fanatics, represented by the 
Central Committee of Union and Progress, or the 
extremist section of it, but of practically the whole 
of the Turkish people, backed by the formidable power 
of the army. Thus, the view that would represent 
the Turkish j>eople as unwitting or unwilling tools 
in the hands of the Unionist Government can no longer 
be accepted. The Turkish race as a whole, with but 
few exceptions, stands convicted of indulging in a 
wanton political dream, for the realization of which 
it seized the opportunity of the world-war to commit 
most atrocious crimes. It is true that the initial 
responsibility lies with the C.U.P., but the whole of 
the Turkish nation has since shared the responsibility 
by its ready response. This is borne out by the easy 
success attained by the Unionist Government in 
modifying — with hardly a dissentient voice — the sys- 
tem of State education, embracing even the elementary 
schools, and in misappropriating the WaJcfs funds. 

^'Military officers of the higher grades were in- 
structed to pay periodical visits to the barracks and 
there deliver lectures of a mixed religious and racial 
character, prepared by the Government. Were not 
the Turkish heart a ready soil, such sowings would not 
have yielded such an early and abundant harvest. In 
spite of successive admixtures of blood, the Turks have 
retained the original instincts of the wild men of the 
Steppes, and a creed aiming at conquest and domina- 
tion through destruction and bloodshed found eager 
response in their souls. Islam, sympathetic as it is, de- 
spite its militant character, was sacrificed for the reali- 
zation of this widest of human dreams. There was not 
enough of *iron and blood' in its teaching. The Tura- 



\ 



192 APPENDIX 

nian creed, framed on the Prussian pattern of mili- 
tarism, appealed a thousand times more to the Turks' 
savage nature; and the proof is that, without any com- 
pulsion being employed, it quickly supplanted the re- 
ligious heritage of centuries. The troops took up read- 
ily the heroic Turanian songs in place of the usual 
prayers which had, until lately, been compulsory, but 
are so no more. The simplest of Anatolians willingly 
accepted the idea that the prophet of later days is 
Enver! The fundamental rules of Islam became, for 
them, the Testimony (for the unity of God), Reason, 
Character, and the Collection of contributions for the 
Government and the War under the Turkish banner.'* 

(From an article entitled "Turanian and Moslem" in The Nea/r 
Eait, April 20, 1917.) 



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